ny advantages that my brier had over
all other pipes. It has given me a reputation for gallantry, to which
without it I fear I could lay no claim. I used to have a passion for
repartee, especially in the society of ladies. But it is with me as with
many other men of parts whose wit has ever to be fired by a long fuse:
my best things strike me as I wend my way home. This embittered my early
days; and not till the pride of youth had been tamed could I stop to lay
in a stock of repartee on likely subjects the night before. Then my
pipe helped me. It was the apparatus that carried me to my prettiest
compliment. Having exposed my pipe in some prominent place where it
could hardly escape notice, I took measures for insuring a visit from
a lady, young, graceful, accomplished. Or I might have it ready for a
chance visitor. On her arrival, I conducted her to a seat near my pipe.
It is not good to hurry on to the repartee at once; so I talked for
a time of the weather, the theatres, the new novel. I kept my eye
on her; and by and by she began to look about her. She observed the
strange-looking pipe. Now is the critical moment. It is possible that
she may pass it by without remark, in which case all is lost; but
experience has shown me that four times out of six she touches it in
assumed horror, to pass some humorous remark. Off tumbles the bowl.
"Oh," she exclaims, "see what I have done! I am so sorry!" I pull myself
together. "Madame," I reply calmly, and bowing low, "what else was to be
expected? You came near my pipe--and it lost its head." She blushes, but
cannot help being pleased; and I set my pipe for the next visitor. By
the help of a note-book, of course, I guarded myself against paying this
very neat compliment to any person more than once. However, after I
smoked the Arcadia the desire to pay ladies compliments went from me.

Journeying back into the past, I come to a time when my pipe had a
mouth-piece of fine amber. The bowl and the rest of the stem were of
brier, but it was a gentlemanly pipe, without silver mountings. Such
tobacco I revelled in as may have filled the pouch of Pan as he lay
smoking on the mountain-sides. Once I saw a beautiful woman with
brown hair, in and out of which the rays of a morning sun played
hide-and-seek, that might not unworthily have been compared to it.
Beguiled by the exquisite Arcadia, the days and the years passed from me
in delicate rings of smoke, and I contentedly watched them sai