asty on the tongue; the arch of the palate is receptive to the fume;
the curling vapour ascends the chimneys of the nose. Fill your cheeks
with the excellent cloudy reek, blow it forth in twists and twirls. The
first pipe!

But, as I was saying, joy ends not here. Granted that the
after-breakfast smoke excels in savour, succeeding fumations grow in
mental reaction. The first pipe is animal, physical, a matter of pure
sensation. With later kindlings of the weed the brain quickens, begins
to throw out tendrils of speculation, leaps to welcome problems for
thought, burrows tingling into the unknowable. As the smoke drifts and
shreds about your neb, your mind is surcharged with that imponderable
energy of thought, which cannot be seen or measured, yet is the most
potent force in existence. All the hot sunlight of Virginia that stirred
the growing leaf in its odorous plantation now crackles in that glowing
dottel in your briar bowl. The venomous juices of the stalk seep down
the stem. The most precious things in the world are also vivid with
poison.

Was Kant a smoker? I think he must have been. How else could he have
written "The Critique of Pure Reason"? Tobacco is the handmaid of
science, philosophy, and literature. Carlyle eased his indigestion and
snappish temper by perpetual pipes. The generous use of the weed makes
the enforced retirement of Sing Sing less irksome to forgers,
second-story men, and fire bugs. Samuel Butler, who had little enough
truck with churchmen, was once invited to stay a week-end by the Bishop
of London. Distrusting the entertaining qualities of bishops, and
rightly, his first impulse was to decline. But before answering the
Bishop's letter he passed it to his manservant for advice. The latter
(the immortal Alfred Emery Cathie) said: "There is a crumb of tobacco in
the fold of the paper, sir: I think you may safely go." He went, and
hugely enjoyed himself.

There is a Bible for smokers, a book of delightful information for all
acolytes of this genial ritual, crammed with wit and wisdom upon the art
and mystery we cherish. It is called "The Social History of Smoking," by
G.L. Apperson. Alas, a friend of mine, John Marshall (he lives somewhere
in Montreal or Quebec), borrowed it from me, and obstinately declines to
return it. If he should ever see this, may his heart be loosened and
relent. Dear John, I wish you would return that book. (_Canadian
journals please copy!_)

* *