One of the pipes had an amber stem and the other
a vulcanite stem, and both of them had silver belts. That also
was compulsory. Having bought them, one was free to smoke
cigarettes. However, at the end of my first year I got to work
seriously on a shilling briar, and I have smoked that, or
something like it, ever since.
In the last four years there has grown up a new school of pipe-
smokers, by which (I suspect) I am hardly regarded as a pipe-
smoker at all. This school buys its pipes always at one
particular shop; its pupils would as soon think of smoking a pipe
without the white spot as of smoking brown paper. So far are they
from smoking brown paper that each one of them has his tobacco
specially blended according to the colour of his hair, his taste
in revues, and the locality in which he lives. The first blend is
naturally not the ideal one. It is only when he has been a
confirmed smoker for at least three months, and knows the best
and worst of all tobaccos, that his exact requirements can be
satisfied.
However, it is the pipe rather than the tobacco which marks him
as belonging to this particular school. He pins his faith, not so
much to its labour-saving devices as to the white spot outside,
the white spot of an otherwise aimless life. This tells the world
that it is one of THE pipes. Never was an announcement more
superfluous. From the moment, shortly after breakfast, when he
strikes his first match to the moment, just before bed-time, when
he strikes his hundredth, it is obviously THE pipe which he is
smoking.
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