The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-12-17

nHG. 10 Ou0T ClSGIs utAO oll WI he'o'
But fastidious smokers will scarcely
patronize it, owing to the odor of the
inclosed air in the hat being communi-
Gated to the fine cigar-the most deli
cate of all vegetable products and the
most easily spoiled. Another curious
item is the cigolette, or cigar pipe, de-
signed to be combination of pipe and
cigar, it being a cigar with the end
curved up like pipe, and this idea IS
brought forward with the claim that 1T
will obyiate all chance of surplus nico-
tine reaching the mouth. The inventor
and maker is one of our large cigar man
ufacturers, and he has put 100000 into
his venture to push it as a holiday nov
city.
Other holiday cigars are conspicuous
by their absence this year, the general
trend of trade being, according to one OF
our best posted men, in the direction of
fine goods rather than the old style
tawdry packages. Instead of stocking
special new brands, the dealers are Of
fering new and finer sizes Of those
brands which have already been stamped
with the approval of their customers.
Appreciators of handsome cigar boxes
may be gratiied this year with gold
boxes, richly chased and engraved with
the Judgment of Paris" etc.-price,
S5OO-or others made of section of ele-
plant tusk, with glazed bottom and
moistening attachment, heavily mounted
in gold, $500. 81
Pipes are the strongest line this sea-
son. They are bewildering in their
numbers and styles. The most popular
shape is the English Carlton, or bulldog
shape, which, the leading dealers say,
sells in the proportion Of about six out
of ten, the others being fancy briers and
a few meerschaums. Ten years ago if a
dealer had asked five dollars for a pipe
the customer would have thought him
fit inmate for Bloomingdale! Today
he will keep in stock pipes varying from
three dollars to eighty dollars, and it
does not excite remark.
Among the highly artistic pipes the
masterpieces Of Herr Koch, of Metz, still
hold their own, and they are unsurpass-
able. This year Yale enthusiast or
dered dozen of these pipes to be plain
bowls, charred black and then smooth
polished, while upon the front was re-
produced the Yale college arms. Other
handsome designs are dragons head,
the scaly neck being charred black and
polished, each scale tipped with gold
leaf, the open mouth having the gums
of the natural brown Of the brier root,
and the tongue of the blood red of the
brier root when polished, the teeth being
of gold leaf-price, thirty dollars. Others
are decorated in mosaic patterns, the
varying colors being produced by the
varying heat of hot irons and polishing,
for no other pigment or color than gold
leaf is used in these artistic Pompeiian
pipes.
And here it is as well to point out that
the ssbrier'' root of these pipes Is not
brier root at all, but bruyere root, the
French name for the sweet heather or
heath root, plenty of which grows in
Virginia, and which is now being sea-
soned and experimental upon by our
pipe firms, who believe with the writer
| that the present craze for fine brier
| pipes has come to stay
This year the holiday goods in pipes
run to cunningly contrived cases, which,
holding a good deal, take up the mini
| mum of room in the pocket, the con-
tents varying from one bowl and two
stems to four bowls and ten stems, all
interchangeable and all of different ma