Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

Taking the whiff, it has been suggested, may have been either a swallowing of the smoke, or a retaining it in the throat for a given space of time; but what may be meant by the "Cuban ebolition" or the "euripus" is perhaps best left to the imagination. "Ebolition" is simply a variant of "ebullition," and "ebullition," as applied with burlesque intent to rapid smoking—the vapour bubbling rapidly from the pipe-bowl—is intelligible enough, but why Cuban? "Euripus" was the name, in ancient geography, of the channel between Eubœa (Negropont) and the mainland—a passage which was celebrated for the violence and uncertainty of its currents—and hence the name was occasionally applied by our older writers to any strait or sea-channel having like characteristics. The use of the word in connexion with tobacco may, like that of "ebolition," have some reference to furious smoking, but the meaning is not clear.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

The highlander, as he existed within living memory at many shop doors, and as he still exists at a few, was and is the survivor of many similar wooden figures as trade signs. The wooden figure of a negro or "Indian" with gilt loin-cloth and feathered head, has already been mentioned as an old tobacconist's sign. In early Georgian days a tobacconist named John Bowden, who dealt in all kinds of snuff, and also in "Aloe, Pigtail, and Wild Tobacco; with all sorts of perfumer's goods, wholesale and retail," traded at the sign of "The Highlander and Black Boy" in Threadneedle Street, London. At York, in this present year, 1914, I came upon a brightly painted wooden figure of Napoleon in full uniform and snuff-box in hand, standing at the door of a small tobacco-shop. Another class of sign or emblem was represented by the "wooden midshipman," which many of us have seen in Leadenhall Street, and which Dickens made famous in "Dombey and Son." Sometimes the wooden figure of a sailor stood outside public-houses with such signs as "The Jolly Sailor"; and a black doll was long a familiar token of the loathly shop kept by the tradesmen mysteriously known as Marine Store Dealers. Images of this kind sometimes stood at the door, or in many cases were placed on brackets or swung from the lintels.

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