210 PLEASANT PIPES. 
also hookahs made by sailors with cocoanut 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. [ 
caution the smoker to have an old glove on; as these pipes 
‘sweat,’ the oil comes catia 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 unesthetic, and the 
evalice 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. 
‘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. : 
“T 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 unesthetic and illiberal: 
it is in an old man most pitiable, in a young one intolerable, in 
