TOBACCO LEAVES 



merely a toothpick, to be used but once and 

 then cast away. But now we desire a more 

 permanent alliance, and so the day of the 

 churchwarden is past, and even its humbler 

 relation, the short clay, having the family 

 failing of brittleness, is disappearing. 



There are devotees of the meerschaum; 

 but it is not every one who will undertake 

 such a responsibility. Its humours and its 

 delicacy become oppressive; it is not to 

 be touched with the hand or smoked out- 

 of-doors, nor too near the fire; nor to be 

 knocked out, or otherwise roughly treated ; 

 nor smoked too fast or too slow. And 

 then, with all our care, we find some happy- 

 go-lucky individual, apparently the espe- 

 cial favourite of the Goddess of the Weed, 

 who does all these forbidden things, and 

 still gets his pipe to a state of perfection 

 which the more painstaking person attains 

 but in his dreams. There is something 

 distinctly irrational in a meerschaum pipe; 



181 



