ccount of a curious
smoking match held at Oxford in 1723. It began at two o'clock in the
afternoon of September 4 on a scaffold specially erected for the
purpose "over against the Theatre in Oxford ... just at Finmore's, an
alehouse." The conditions were that any one (man or woman) who could
smoke out three ounces of tobacco first, without drinking or going off
the stage, should have 12s. "Many tryed," continues Hearne, "and 'twas
thought that a journeyman taylour of St. Peter's in the East would
have been victor, he smoking faster than, and being many pipes before,
the rest: but at last he was so sick, that 'twas thought he would have
dyed; and an old man, that had been a souldier, and smoaked gently,
came off conqueror, smoaking the three ounces quite out, and he told
one (from whom I had it) that, after it, he smoaked 4 or 5 pipes the
same evening." The old soldier was a well-seasoned veteran.

Another foreign visitor to England, the Abbe Le Blanc, who was over
here about 1730, found English customs rather trying. "Even at table,"
he says, "where they serve desserts, they do but show them, and
presently take away everything, even to the tablecloth. By this the
English, whom politeness does not permit to tell the ladies their
company is troublesome, give them notice to retire.... The table is
immediately covered with mugs, bottles and glasses; and often with
pipes of tobacco. All things thus disposed, the ceremony of toasts
begins."

The frowns and remonstrances of Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of
Friends had not succeeded in putting the Quakers' pipes out. In a list
of sea stores put on board a vessel called by the un-Quaker-like name
of _The Charming Polly_, which brought a party of Friends across the
Atlantic from Philadelphia in 1756, we find "In Samuel Fothergill's
new chest ... Tobacco ... a Hamper ... a Barrel ... a box of pipes."
The provident Samuel was well found for a long voyage.

The non-smokers were the men of fashion and those who followed them in
preferring the snuff-box to the pipe. Sometimes, apparently, they
chewed. A _World_ of 1754 pokes fun at the "pretty" young men who
"take pains to appear manly. But alas! the methods they pursue, like
most mistaken applications, rather aggravate the calamity. Their
drinking and raking only makes them look like old maids. Their
swearing is almost as shocking as it would be in the other sex. Their
chewing tobacco not only offends, but makes us apprehensive a