ling to
the skies. How continuous was the line of those lovely circles, and how
straight! One could have passed an iron rod through them from end to
end. But one day I had a harsh awakening. I bit the amber mouth-piece
of my pipe through, and life was never the same again.

It is strange how attached we become to old friends, though they be but
inanimate objects. The old pipe put aside, I turned to a meerschaum,
which had been presented to me years before, with the caution that I
must not smoke it unless I wore kid gloves. There was no savor in that
pipe for me. I tried another brier, and it made me unhappy. Clays would
not keep in with me. It seemed as if they knew I was hankering after the
old pipe, and went out in disgust. Then I got a new amber mouth-piece
for my first love. In a week I had bitten that through too, and in an
over-anxious attempt to file off the ragged edges I broke the screw.
Moralists have said that the smoker who has no thought but for his pipe
never breaks it; that it is he only who while smoking concentrates his
mind on some less worthy object that sends his teeth through the amber.
This may be so; for I am a philosopher, and when working out new
theories I may have been careless even of that which inspired them most.

After this second accident nothing went well with me or with my pipe.
I took the mouthpieces out of other pipes and fixed them on to the
Mermaid. In a little while one of them became too wide; another broke as
I was screwing it more firmly in. Then the bowl cracked at the rim and
split at the bottom. This was an annoyance until I found out what was
wrong and plugged up the fissures with sealing-wax. The wax melted and
dropped upon my clothes after a time; but it was easily renewed.

It was now that I had the happy thought of bringing a cigarette-holder
to my assistance. But of course one cannot make a pipe-stem out of a
cigarette-holder all at once. The thread you wind round the screw has
a disappointing way of coming undone, when down falls the bowl, with
an escape of sparks. Twisting a piece of paper round the screw is an
improvement; but, until you have acquired the knack, the operation has
to be renewed every time you relight your pipe. This involves a sad loss
of time, and in my case it afforded a butt for the dull wit of visitors.
Otherwise I found it satisfactory, and I was soon astonishingly adept
at making paper screws. Eventually my brier became as serviceable as
forme