Pipes 



139 



pipeless, digs a small hole in the ground, beats down 

 the earth hard, lights some tobacco in it, and thrust- 

 ing a hollow reed below it, sucks up the smoke. The 

 poorer Chinaman advances a stage farther when he 

 makes a simple pipe by boring a hole near the end of 

 a joint in a slender bamboo, and places and lights a 

 pill of tobacco in it. 



Upon the first rough pipe the Indian rapidly 

 improved as smoking passed from the ceremonial 

 into the practical stage, from use as incense and a 

 source of supernatural guidance into the daily 

 comforter and helpmeet, not of the medicine-man 

 only, but of the whole Indian people. From them 

 all nations have adopted the pipe, the first as it is the 

 best mode of drinking tobacco. The true smoker 

 regards all as mere dawdling save the pipe. Nor 

 is the reason far to seek. The smoking of cigars 

 or cigarettes is merely a practice — a habit. Pipe- 

 smoking is a cult. The one is polytheism or 

 polygamy, the other pure theism or monogamy. 

 In all nations and countries the pipe is, and ever 

 will be, the only smoke of the true, ardent Nicotian. 

 To him smoking is more than a mere burning of a 

 herb, the inhalation of the fume, the expiration of 

 smoke ; it is more than a mere physical performance : 

 it is spiritual and mental as well as material ; it is a 

 cult ; it is smoking in short and in deed. 



In the Indian grave-mounds of the Mississippi 

 Valley there have been found specimens of the 

 primitive pipes which prove the practice of smoking 

 to be literally older than the hills. The antiquity 

 of these mounds, and hence of the pipes, is shown 



