10s. for the heinous
offence of allowing a brother parishioner to smoke in his house.

Penalties for "offences" of this fanciful kind were not common in
England; but in Puritan New England they were abundant. In the early
days of the American Colonies the use of the "creature called Tobacko"
was by no means encouraged. In Connecticut a man was permitted by the
law to smoke once if he went on a journey of ten miles, but not more
than once a day and by no means in another man's house. It could
hardly have been difficult to evade so absurd a regulation as this.

It has been already stated that the Elizabethan gallant was
acquainted with the most fashionable methods of inhaling and exhaling
the smoke of tobacco. A singular feature of the enthusiasm for tobacco
in the early years of the seventeenth century was the existence of
professors of the art of smoking.

Some of the apothecaries whose shops were in most repute for the
quality of the tobacco kept, took pupils and taught them the
"slights," as tricks with the pipe were called. These included
exhaling the smoke in little globes, rings and so forth. The
invaluable Ben Jonson, in the preliminary account of the characters in
his "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, describes one Sogliardo as
"an essential clown ... yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman
that he will have it though he buys it. He comes up every term to
learn to take tobacco and see new motions." Sogliardo was accustomed
to hire a private room to practise in. The fashionable way was to
expel the smoke through the nose. In a play by Field of 1618, a
foolish nobleman is asked by some boon companions in a tavern: "Will
your lordship take any tobacco?" when another sneers, "'Sheart! he
cannot put it through his nose!" His lordship was apparently not well
versed in the "slights."

Taking tobacco was clearly an accomplishment to be studied seriously.
Shift, a professor of the art in Jonson's play, puts up a bill in St.
Paul's--the recognized centre for advertisements and commercial
business of every kind--in which he offers to teach any young
gentleman newly come into his inheritance, who wishes to be as exactly
qualified as the best of the ordinary-hunting gallants are--"to
entertain the most gentlemanlike use of tobacco; as first, to give it
the most exquisite perfume; then to know all the delicate sweet forms
for the assumption of it; as also the rare corollary and practice of
the Cuban ebolition, eur