The Portland daily press., 1875-11-09
From Julian Hawthorne.l
How to Choose a Pipe.

In styles of pipe have experimental largely,
have sounded the gamut of plain clay. gambler
meershaum land chip. charcoal, porcelain, and
brier The PLAIN clay-the cutty-is workman
like and democratic; 1 think would adopt it
if were running for high Office. Gambler is
rather fantastic but colors as easily as sweet
sixteen; to me it is objection that. being made
in moulds, L know not how many thousand
people may be putting at the twin brother or
sister of that between fingers. As for the char
Goals, they promised well, and were not with
out their season of popularity; there was some-
thing of classic elegance and simplicity in their
smooth black dress and silver trimming. But
they didn't wear WELL somehow; they broke,
and got incurable Group, and of course never al
tered their color for better or worse. And the
porcelain was hard and harsh, heating and un-
absorbent; so the question finally lay between
meerSchaum and brier
Now. than a fine piece of true meerschaum
nothing is more fascinating, sweeter hand
somer. Mark its tender. creamy tint, its soft,
fine lustre. its smooth texture Lift tit is
light as sponge; and you can almost indent it
by the pressure OF your fingers. You ii it
(rather, if you are wise. you fill false bowl set
on to it), and as you draw in the smoke you
can almost see the delicate brown flushing
deeper and deeper through the white By slow
degrees, lest you overhead II, with most jeal-
Gus care, lest you chip or scratch it, do you
prosecute the experiment, until after some
weeks or months, the point of perfection is
attained. There is nothing comparable to the
warm, intense brown. mottled and shaded, rich
and polished, which is now diffused around the
bowl. 1t is not like moss agates, nor oriental
marbles, nor precious woods, yet it brings all
these delicately to mind. The color lies in
clusters, as it were, yet shades off uniformly
forward the lip. which is burned white. Around
the neck it is deepest and thickest, and just
here you can hardly call it less than black.
There is similar difference betw cen the pipe
now and in its primitive purity, to that between
a sunlit cloud at midday, and the same gilded
and empurpled by the splendor of sunset Not
always however, nor indeed often. is such sue
cess in meerschaum colorng met with. In the
first place. instead of meerschaum, it turns out
to be ''chip," which is shavings of meerschaum
welded together. and so recut; the pipes look
well enough in the shop, but all the sponginess
and delcacy is lost; the oil cannot penetrate,
or comes out in blotches here and there; the
bowl becomes rusty and dirty, all the perique
in the world can produce nothing better on it
than dirty yellow TINT irregularly disturbed,
and the draft gets easily clogged Similar is
the result should the pipe prove-meerschaum
indeed. but-of hard, impenetrable variety.
Nothing can be done; you may boil it and
burn it, and make it all sorts of coloas, but Won
deceive neither yourself nor any one else into
thinking it comparable to the genuine, inimita-
BILE "sea-foam."
This is not the only trouble about meer-
schaum.-Gatdry for N0venaber.