to write a humorous
article, he says to his wife, 'Where is my funny pipe?' and she hands
him a long-handled affair with a weichsel-wood bowl and a cherry stem
that has a kind of rakish, good-natured curve to it. Then he sits
down and grinds out copy that will make an Englishman laugh at first
sight. A big, dumpy brier, with a shorter stem and a celluloid end, is
responsible for general descriptive work, sporting news, etc., while
a trim little meerschaum with a carved bowl engenders excellent
criticisms of music and drama. Occasionally, too, this bright
fellow, who does considerable work on the editorial page, gets into
a newspaper controversy. Then he pulls from his pocket a short
'bull-dog' with a horn tip, whose massive, square-jawed bowl and
ferocious short-curved stem breathe forth aggressiveness, and, jamming
it full of 'plug cut,' he writes one of those satirical, sledge-hammer
roasts which make him feared by his opponents.

"One night he was detailed to write up a show at one of the leading
theatres. The play was 'East Lynne,' which, as a tear-producer, ranks
away up and was presented by a first-class company. When the critic
reached home he was feeling pretty sad, so he looked around for his
meerschaum. His wife had been cleaning house that day and he couldn't
find any pipe but the long one. What was the result? Why, he wrote
such a humorous description of the play that everybody thought 'East
Lynne' was a farce comedy and, when the performance closed on the
following night, two-thirds of the audience wanted their money back.

"His worst crack, though, was when a man of great local prominence,
who stood high with the people, died and it fell to G.'s lot to
describe the funeral ceremonies and eulogize the deceased. G.'s
mother-in-law had just arrived and the poor fellow was so badly
rattled that he got hold of the 'bull-dog' instead of the brier and
made the Hon. G. out the grandest rascal who had ever preyed upon the
vitals of a law-abiding community. The only thing that saved his neck
this time was the fact that it all turned out to be true and his paper
got the credit of a 'scoop.' After that he had a little case made to
hold all four of his pipes, with a strap to go around his neck--and I
guess he sleeps with it now.

"They say that Guttenberg conceived the notion of the printing press
while taking an after-dinner smoke; that Stephenson's ideas of steam
locomotion came to him through the curling wreaths