fing egg flip, devouring Welsh rabbits, and smoking pipes of
Orinooko." Or the back garden in Chelsea where Carlyle and Emerson
counted the afternoon well spent, though neither one had said a hundred
words--had they not smoked together? Or Piscator and Viator, as they
trudged together to "prevent the sunrise" on Amwell Hill--did not the
reek of their tobacco trail most bluely on the sweet morning air? Or old
Fitz, walking on the Deben wall at Woodbridge, on his way to go sailing
with Posh down to Bawdsey Ferry--what mixture did he fill and light?
Something recommended by Will Thackeray, I'll be sworn. Or, to come down
to more recent days, think of Captain Joseph Conrad at his lodgings in
Bessborough Gardens, lighting that apocalyptic pipe that preceded the
first manuscript page of "Almayer's Folly." Could I only have been the
privileged landlady's daughter who cleared away the Captain's breakfast
dishes that morning! I wonder if she remembers the incident?[E]

[Footnote E: The reference here is to Chapter IV of Joseph Conrad's "A
Personal Record." The author's allusions are often sadly
obscure.--EDITOR.]

It is the heart of fellowship, the core and pith and symbol of masculine
friendship and good talk. Your cigar will do for drummers, your
cigarettes for the dilettante smoker, but for the ripened, boneset
votary nothing but a briar will suffice. Away with meerschaum, calabash,
cob, and clay: they have their purpose in the inscrutable order of
things, like crossing sweepers and presidents of women's clubs; but when
Damon and Pythias meet to talk things over, well-caked briars are in
order. Cigars are all right in fiction: for Prince Florizel and Colonel
Geraldine when they visit the famous Divan in Rupert Street. It was
Leigh Hunt, in the immortal Wishing Cap Papers (so little read, alas!),
who uttered the finest plea for cigars that this language affords, but I
will wager not a director of the United Cigar Stores ever read it.

The fine art of smoking used, in older days, to have an etiquette, a
usage, and traditions of its own, which a more hurried and hygienic age
has discarded. It was the height of courtesy to ask your friend to let
you taste his pipe, and draw therefrom three or four mouthfuls of smoke.
This afforded opportunity for a gracious exchange of compliments. "Will
it please you to impart your whiff?" was the accepted phrase. And then,
having savored his mixture, you would have said: "In truth, a very
exc