PIPE

The last smoker I recollect among those of the old school was a
clergyman. He had seen the best society, and was a man of the most
polished behaviour. This did not hinder him from taking his pipe
every evening before he went to bed. He sat in his armchair, his
back gently bending, his knees a little apart, his eyes placidly
inclined toward the fire. The end of his recreation was announced by
the tapping of the bowl of his pipe upon the hob, for the purpose of
emptying it of its ashes. Ashes to ashes; head to bed.

--LEIGH HUNT.

The sensible man smokes (say) sixteen pipefuls a day, and all differ in
value and satisfaction. In smoking there is, thank heaven, no law of
diminishing returns. I may puff all day long until I nigresce with the
fumes and soot, but the joy loses no savour by repetition. It is true
that there is a peculiar blithe rich taste in the first morning puffs,
inhaled after breakfast. (Let me posit here the ideal conditions for a
morning pipe as I know them.) After your bath, breakfast must be spread
in a chamber of eastern exposure; let there be hominy and cream, and if
possible, brown sugar. There follow scrambled eggs, shirred to a
lemon-yellow, with toast sliced in triangles, fresh, unsalted butter,
and Scotch bitter marmalade. Let there be without fail a platter of hot
bacon, curly, juicy, fried to the debatable point where softness is
overlaid with the faintest crepitation of crackle, of crispyness. If hot
Virginia corn pone is handy, so much the better. And coffee, two-thirds
hot milk, also with brown sugar. It must be permissible to call for a
second serving of the scrambled eggs; or, if this is beyond the budget,
let there be a round of judiciously grilled kidneys, with mayhap a
sprinkle of mushrooms, grown in chalky soil. That is the kind of
breakfast they used to serve in Eden before the fall of man and the
invention of innkeepers with their crass formulae.

After such a breakfast, if one may descend into a garden of plain turf,
mured about by an occluding wall, with an alley of lime trees for sober
pacing: then and there is the fit time and place for the first pipe of
the day. Pack your mixture in the bowl; press it lovingly down with the
cushion of the thumb; see that the draught is free--and then for your
_saeckerhets taendstickor!_ A day so begun is well begun, and sin will
flee your precinct. Shog, vile care! The smoke is cool and blue and
t