Evening star., 1926-12-10

Borrowing tobacco off ones friends
is generally unsatisfactory.
In the first place, their tobacco is
always too dry.
Curious, isn't it, how ones friends
never keep their tobacco to suit one?
Now, smoking tobacco ought to
be kept in a semi-moist state to
make it fit for the pipe of peace, as
every pipe worthy of the name is.
There is a golden mean, just
moist enough, not wet. and certainly
not dry--in which tobacco yields the
best that is in it.
Tobacco in just this precious state
of preservation is the sort that has
won the praise of Sir James Barrie
and every other pipe smoker. Your
pipe smoker will secretly feel that
cigars are just so many pounds Of
good tobacco gone wrong, but he will
not say so, for he knows how many
millions of men smoke them and how
many millions of dollars annually go
into them.
Infinite care is taken to keep cigars
in the perfect state of moisture until
they are stuck between the lips of
the ultimate consumer. Then elab-
crate humidors are sold for the same
purpose in the home.
Cigarettes, smoked in untold num-
bers, go up in smoke so quickly that
the same good precautions are not
so necessary. A cigarette is perhap ps
the only form of "smoke" that may
be too dry and get away with it,
x X X x
Humidors of stone and glass are
popular with real pipe smokers, men
who roll out of bed in the morning
and light up before breakfast. There
is perhaps your test of a dyed-in-the-
wool pipe smoker. The popular con-
ception of cigarette fiend," as they
We're once called in the youth of the re-
public, is of a young man who must
smoke before breakfast. Cigar addicts
rarely do it. But there are any num-
Der of pipe smokers who puff a bowl
full before consuming the morning
toast and coffee.
The man who has got this far in
his WOoing of My Lady Nicotine has
a humidor, in which he can keep his
precious tobacco at that theoretical
point of saturation at which it is
ready at all times to yield it's best
in taste, flavor, aroma and so on.
Just what this moisture content
must be, in hard figures, is not a
question. 1t is, in this matter, much
as it is with your radio storag sc bat
terry. The specific gravity of the
solution ought to be around 1850, or
some such figure, but there are thou
sands upon thousands of persons who
keep little storage battery in their
home without ever once knowing that
such a thing as specific gravity ex-
lists. They know when the set sounds
all right, and when it does not they
call up the battery man.
Your pipe smoker knows, similarly,
when his tobacco tastes as it ought to
taste. COnnoisseurs come to know
the feel of their tobacco, held between
thumb and forefingeI, much as judges
of fine silks can tell one fabric from
another biindfoldad, or tea tasters"
discriminate between blend and blend
Manufacturers Of fine smoking to-
bacco take infinite pains to deliver
their products to the smoker in the
final perfect state Of the factory proc
ess. Tobacco is generally put
through many elaborate treatments,
the number and variety of which is
amazing to one when he first looks
into the matter.
At a certain point in the final dry
ing out the tobacco is packed in sealed
cans or foil packages. The former