others, and smoke them
sick or into retreating. I, however, found a source of joy in this, that
I could now sit almost from morning till night, and very often on to
three in the morning, smoking all the time, being deeply learned in
Varinas, Kanaster, and the like; for I smoked nothing but real Holland
tobacco, while I could buy it. A party of Sophomores informed George
Boker that they intended to smoke me out. "Smoke _him_ out!" quoth
George; "why, he'd smoke the whole of you dumb and blind." However, it
came to pass that one evening several of them tried it on; and verily
they might as well have tried it on to Niklas Henkerwyssel, who, as the
legend goes, sold his soul to the devil for the ability to smoke all the
time, to whom my father had once compared me. So the cigars and tobacco
were burned, and I liked it extremely. Denser grew the smoke, and the
windows were closed, to which I cheerfully assented, for I liked to have
it thick; and still more smoke and more, and the young gentlemen who had
come to smother me grew pale, even as the Porcupines grew pale when they
tried to burn out the great Indian sorcerer, who burned _them_! But I,
who was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly in such congenial society,
only filled Boker's great meerschaum with Latakia, and puffed away. One
by one the visitors also "puffed away," _i.e._, vanished through the door
into the night.

"Shall I open the window?" asked George.

"Not on my account," I replied. "I rather enjoy it as it is."

"I begin to believe," replied my friend, "that you would like it in
Dante's hell of clouds. Do you know what those men came here for? It
was _to smoke you out_. And you smoked them out, and never knew it."
Which was perfectly true. As for smoking, my only trouble was to be able
to buy cigars and tobacco. These were incredibly cheap in those days,
and I always dressed very respectably, but my smoking always cost me more
than my clothing.

When we Freshmen had rebelled, we were punished by being rusticated or
sent into the country to board. I went to Professor Dodd to receive my
sentence, and in a grave voice, in which was a faint ring as of irony,
and with the lurking devil which always played in his great marvellous
mysterious black eyes, he said, "If you were any other student, I would
not send you to the city, and so reward your rebellion with a holiday.
But as I know perfectly well that you will go into the Philadelphia
Library, a