FRENCH PIPES. 179 



connection with publicans and tobacconists, whom he 

 supplies from year to year. The profit these men 

 derive from their merchandise ' is exceedingly small; 

 but they have an allowance for breakage which, being 

 a careful race, they contrive to avoid, and thus 

 increase their percentage.* 



The same author observes: The commonest French 

 pipe is a well-finished article, with a graceful bowl 

 and a well-proportioned stem ; its owner keeps it in a 

 case, and reveres it for its blackened hue and pungent 

 odour, and grows attached to it from long use. Num- 

 bers of the better class of French pipes are manu- 

 factured of porcelain, and some are adorned with 

 enamelled portraits and beautiful heads, executed in a 

 style that puts to shame the works of our average 

 miniature painters. Others are formed of various 

 kinds of earth or earthy compounds, compressed in 

 moulds by the potter, and afterwards cut in deeper 

 relief by hand. Some are made of rare kinds of wood 

 turned in the lathe or artistically carved, and lined 

 with clay or earthen bowls to resist the fire. Again, 

 they are fashioned in elegant shapes from masses of 

 agate, amber, crystal, carnelian, and ivory, as well as 

 the various kinds of pure or mixed metals. Pipes 



* The price wholesale for these pipes is astonishingly low, about Is. id. 

 per gross. They are bought retail (allowing a profit to the vendor) at the 

 rate of four for one penny ! It is the custom to collect the dirty tobacco- 

 pipes of the parlour customers of public-houses, and purify the bowls by 

 burning in the kilns for the use of the taproom customers ; for this a very 

 small charge is mads by the pipe-makers. Poor people frequently clean 

 a pipe when foul, by thrusting the bowl into the fire until it is red hot. 



n 2 



