igned an agreement with his wife to go
to bed at half-past twelve. For some time I could not understand why
he had a silver rim put on the bowl. I noticed the change in the tap
at once, and the natural conclusion would have been that the bowl had
cracked. But it never had the tap of a cracked bowl. I was reluctant
to believe that the man through the wall was merely some vulgar fellow,
and I felt that he could not be so, or else he would have smoked his
meerschaum more. At last I understood. The bowl had worn away on one
side, and the silver rim had been needed to keep the tobacco in.
Undoubtedly this was the explanation, for even before the rim came I was
a little puzzled by the taps of the brier. He never seemed to hit the
wall with the whole mouth of the bowl, but of course the reason was that
he could not. At the same time I do not exonerate him from blame. He is
a clumsy smoker to burn his bowl at one side, and I am afraid he lets
the stem slip round in his teeth. Of course, I see that the mouth-piece
is loose, but a piece of blotting-paper would remedy that.

His meerschaum is not such a good one as Jimmy's. Though Jimmy's
boastfulness about his meerschaum was hard to bear, none of us ever
denied the pipe's worth. The man through the wall has not a cherry-wood
stem to his meerschaum, and consequently it is too light. A ring has
been worn into the palm of his left hand, owing to his tapping the
meerschaum there, and it is as marked as Jimmy's ring, for, though Jimmy
tapped more strongly, the man through the wall has to tap oftener.

What I chiefly dislike about the man through the wall is his treatment
of his clay. A clay, I need scarcely say, has an entirely different tap
from a meerschaum, but the man through the wall does not treat these two
pipes as if they were on an equality. He ought to tap his clay on the
palm of his hand, but he seldom does so, and I am strongly of opinion
that when he does, it is only because he has forgotten that this is not
the meerschaum. Were he to tap the clay on the walls or on the ribs of
the fireplace he would smash it, so he taps it on a coal. About this
there is something contemptible. I am not complaining because he has
little affection for his clay. In face of all that has been said in
honor of clays, and knowing that this statement will occasion an outcry
against me, I admit that I never cared for clays myself. A rank tobacco
is less rank through a church-warden, but to smoke