210 PLEASANT PIPES. 



also hookahs made by sailors with cocoannt shells. All, 

 however, now agree that it is impossible to have either com- 

 fortable, cool, or safe smoking, unless through a substance 

 like clay, porous and absorbent, especially as portable pipes 

 are the mode. Those of black charcoal are not handsome ; 

 indeed, I always feel like a mute at a funeral while smoking 

 one, but they are delightfully cool, absorbing more essential 

 oil of nicotine, and more quickly than any meerschaum. I 

 caution the smoker to have an old glove on ; as these pipes 

 ' sweat,' the oil comes through, and nothing is more pertina- 

 cious than oil of tobacco when it sinks into your pores, or 

 floats about hair or clothes. My own taste inclines to the 

 German receiver, long cherry tube and amber, and to my 

 own garden, for all street smoking is unsesthetic, and the 

 traveller by coach, boat, or rail has the tastes of others to 

 consult. Surely it is not urbane to throw on another the 

 burden of saying that he likes not the smell or the inhaling 

 of burning tobacco. Better postpone your solace to more 

 fitting time and place the close of day and your own 

 veranda. Indoor smoking is detestable. Life has few direr 

 disenchanters than the morning smells of obsolete tobacco, 

 relics though they be of hesternal beatitude. Give me, in 

 robe or jacket, a hookah, or German arrangement, Chinese 

 recumbency in matted and moistened veranda, and the odors 

 of fresh growing beds of flowers wafted by the southern 

 breeze. Nor be wanting the fragrant perfume of coffee. 

 4 Meat without salt,' says Hafiz, ' is even as tobacco without 

 coffee.' The tannin of the coffee corrects the nicotine. And 

 it may not be amiss to learn that a plate of watercress, salt, 

 and a large glass of cold water should be at hand to the 

 smoker by day ; the watercress corrects any excess, and is 

 at hand in a garden. Smoke not before breakfast, nor till 

 an hour has elapsed after a good meal. Smoke not with or 

 before wine, you destroy the wine-palate. If, you love tea, 

 postpone pipe till after it ; no man can enjoy fine tea who 

 has smoked. In short, smoke not till the day is done, with 

 all its tasks and duties. 



"I have seen men of pretension and position treat carpets 

 most contumeliously, trampling on the pride of Plato with a 

 recklessness that would bring a blush to the cheek of Diogenes 

 himself. Can they forget the absorbent powers of carpet 

 tissues, and the horrors of next morning to non-smokers, 

 perhaps to ladies ? Surely this is unsesthetic and illiberal : 

 it is in an old man most pitiable, in a young one intolerable, in 



