My Lady Nicotine | Page 9

But, as a rule, none
of us paid much attention to what the others said, and after the last pipe
the room emptied--unless Marriot insisted on staying behind to bore me
with his scruples--by first one and then another putting his pipe into his
pocket and walking silently out of the room.
[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV.
MY PIPES.
In a select company of scoffers my brier was known as the Mermaid.
The mouth-piece was a cigarette-holder, and months of unwearied
practice were required before you found the angle at which the bowl
did not drop off.
[Illustration]
This brings me to one of the many advantages that my brier had over
all other pipes. It has given me a reputation for gallantry, to which
without it I fear I could lay no claim. I used to have a passion for
repartee, especially in the society of ladies. But it is with me as with
many other men of parts whose wit has ever to be fired by a long fuse:
my best things strike me as I wend my way home. This embittered my
early days; and not till the pride of youth had been tamed could I stop
to lay in a stock of repartee on likely subjects the night before. Then
my pipe helped me. It was the apparatus that carried me to my prettiest
compliment. Having exposed my pipe in some prominent place where
it could hardly escape notice, I took measures for insuring a visit from a
lady, young, graceful, accomplished. Or I might have it ready for a
chance visitor. On her arrival, I conducted her to a seat near my pipe. It
is not good to hurry on to the repartee at once; so I talked for a time of
the weather, the theatres, the new novel. I kept my eye on her; and by
and by she began to look about her. She observed the strange-looking

pipe. Now is the critical moment. It is possible that she may pass it by
without remark, in which case all is lost; but experience has shown me
that four times out of six she touches it in assumed horror, to pass some
humorous remark. Off tumbles the bowl. "Oh," she exclaims, "see what
I have done! I am so sorry!" I pull myself together. "Madame," I reply
calmly, and bowing low, "what else was to be expected? You came
near my pipe--and it lost its head." She blushes, but cannot help being
pleased; and I set my pipe for the next visitor. By the help of a
note-book, of course, I guarded myself against paying this very neat
compliment to any person more than once. However, after I smoked the
Arcadia the desire to pay ladies compliments went from me.
Journeying back into the past, I come to a time when my pipe had a
mouth-piece of fine amber. The bowl and the rest of the stem were of
brier, but it was a gentlemanly pipe, without silver mountings. Such
tobacco I revelled in as may have filled the pouch of Pan as he lay
smoking on the mountain-sides. Once I saw a beautiful woman with
brown hair, in and out of which the rays of a morning sun played
hide-and-seek, that might not unworthily have been compared to it.
Beguiled by the exquisite Arcadia, the days and the years passed from
me in delicate rings of smoke, and I contentedly watched them sailing
to the skies. How continuous was the line of those lovely circles, and
how straight! One could have passed an iron rod through them from
end to end. But one day I had a harsh awakening. I bit the amber
mouth-piece of my pipe through, and life was never the same again.
It is strange how attached we become to old friends, though they be but
inanimate objects. The old pipe put aside, I turned to a meerschaum,
which had been presented to me years before, with the caution that I
must not smoke it unless I wore kid gloves. There was no savor in that
pipe for me. I tried another brier, and it made me unhappy. Clays would
not keep in with me. It seemed as if they knew I was hankering after
the old pipe, and went out in disgust. Then I got a new amber
mouth-piece for my first love. In a week I had bitten that through too,
and in an over-anxious attempt to file off the ragged edges I broke the
screw. Moralists have said that the smoker who has no thought but for
his pipe never breaks it; that it is he only who while smoking

concentrates his mind on some less worthy object that sends his teeth
through the amber. This may be so; for I