e on Main street (there must be
a livery stable on Main street) I can see the old creaky, cane-bottomed
chairs (with seats punctured by too much philosophy) tilted against the
sycamore trees, ready for the afternoon gossip and shag tobacco. I can
imagine the small boys of Boonville fishing for catfish from the piers
of the bridge or bathing down by the steamboat dock (if there is one),
and yearning for the day when they, too, will be grown up and old enough
to smoke corncobs.

[Illustration]

What is the subtle magic of a corncob pipe? It is never as sweet or as
mellow as a well-seasoned briar, and yet it has a fascination all its
own. It is equally dear to those who work hard and those who loaf with
intensity. When you put your nose to the blackened mouth of the hot cob
its odor is quite different from that fragrance of the crusted wooden
bowl. There is a faint bitterness in it, a sour, plaintive aroma. It is
a pipe that seems to call aloud for the accompaniment of beer and
earnest argument on factional political matters. It is also the pipe
for solitary vigils of hard and concentrated work. It is the pipe that a
man keeps in the drawer of his desk for savage hours of extra toil after
the stenographer has powdered her nose and gone home.

A corncob pipe is a humble badge of philosophy, an evidence of tolerance
and even humor. It requires patience and good cheer, for it is slow to
"break in." Those who meditate bestial and brutal designs against the
weak and innocent do not smoke it. Probably Hindenburg never saw one.
Missouri's reputation for incredulity may be due to the corncob habit.
One who is accustomed to consider an argument over a burning nest of
tobacco, with the smoke fuming upward in a placid haze, will not accept
any dogma too immediately.

There is a singular affinity among those who smoke corncobs. A Missouri
meerschaum whose bowl is browned and whose fiber stem is frayed and
stringy with biting betrays a meditative and reasonable owner. He will
have pondered all aspects of life and be equally ready to denounce any
of them, but without bitterness. If you see a man on a street corner
smoking a cob it will be safe to ask him to watch the baby a minute
while you slip around the corner. You would even be safe in asking him
to lend you a five. He will be safe, too, because he won't have it.

Think, therefore, of the charm of a town where corncob pipes are the
chief industry. Think of them stacked up in br