lor in a given time than
others this is owing in a great measure however to the
thickness of the bowl."

Pipe-colorers, who go around coloring pipes or meerschaums, pride
themselves on the rapidity with which they are enabled to color a
pipe. The following, on "Pipe Colorers," is from "The Tobacco Plant":

"There are men who pride themselves upon the skill with
which they are able to color the pipes they smoke. Some of
these are amateurs, who smoke Tobacco only with the view of
gratifying that taste for color which is satisfied when a
bowl of clay or meerschaum is sufficiently yellowed,
browned, or blacked. There are men who care nothing for
Tobacco of itself, and would be much more easily and
rationally pleased were they to set their pipes upon an
easel and paint them with oils and camel's-hair. Others of
the class are professional colorers, who hire themselves to
pipe-sellers or connoisseurs by the week, or day, or hour,
to smoke so many ounces or pounds of strong Tobacco through
such and such pipes in such and such a time, with the
view of causing such and such stains of Tobacco-juice to
make themselves visible on the bowls or stems of those
specified pipes. These are mostly old, well-seasoned
smokers, to whose existence the weed has become essential;
who smoke their own old pipes, which lack artistic coloring,
in the intervals when they lay aside the pipes they are
employed to color. Another and much smaller section of the
class are those who smoke for smoking's sake, and yet are
weak enough to nurse some special pipes for show. To such it
is a joy to say, when friends are gathered at the festive
board 'Look! is not that well colored? I colored it myself.'
In such an age as this, when the learned cannot tell us
which of our various branches of knowledge and inquiry are
sciences and which are not, it may not seem a great anomaly
that this pipe-coloring should, by some, be called 'an art.'
Nor is it, when we think that there is such an 'art' as
blacking shoes; and when we must perforce admit that he who,
barber fashion, cuts our hair--and he who, cook-wise, broils
the kidney for our mid-day dinner--is an artist. We have not
come as yet to give this title to the weaver who watches the
loom that weaves our stockings, or to the hammer-man w