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The panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains; the soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet; the backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps; the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his little host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge meerschaum pipe, had such a queer resemblance to a moon.
"My papa's got 'bout a million pipes," boasted Jimmy, "but he got 'em all to the office, I spec'." "Father has a meerschaum." "Aunt Minerva ain't got no pipe." "Miss Minerva's 'bout the curiousest woman they is," said Jimmy; "she ain't got nothing a tall; she ain't got no paint and she ain't got no pipe."
This unintelligible, and to my inexperienced ears, irreverent conversation, proceeded from half a dozen powerful young men, in low-crowned sailors' hats and flannel trousers, some in striped jerseys, some in shooting-jackets, some smoking cigars, some beating up eggs in sherry; while my cousin, dressed like "a fancy waterman," sat on the back of a sofa, puffing away at a huge meerschaum.
'Something very important? 'Oh, very important! she laughed archly, reddening, and then was gone; and Aunt Hannah followed her to the door. 'What th' old folks lose, murmured Meshach, apparently to the fire, as he put his half-consumed cigar into a meerschaum holder, 'goes to the profit of young Burgess, as is waiting outside the Bank at top o' th' Square.
If the man through the wall has decided, after reflection and experiment, that his clay is a mistake, I say let him smoke it no more; but so long as he does smoke it I would have it receive consideration from him. I very much question whether, if he reads his heart, he could learn from it that he loves his meerschaum more than his clay, yet because the meerschaum cost more he taps it on his palm.
They are most of them of bamboo, and very often are beautifully colored with the mellowest and richest tints of a wisely smoked meerschaum. A small jar of prepared opium a thick black paste resembling tar stands near the lamp.
Thus, after a while, he became an excellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in the rack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, and spent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugs of beer he could "put away." Gaining in audacity, he danced at Bullier's, dined at Foyd's, and at last had a mistress.
If he does not find the supposed whale-unmentionable a good stout holding harpoon, with a tough line to it, and a long one, it's a pity, Alton my boy!" And he burst into a coarse laugh, tossed himself down on the sofa, and re-lighted his meerschaum. "He seemed to me," I answered, "to have a peculiar courtesy and liberality of mind towards those below him in rank." "Oh! he had, had he?
Stephen was greatly drawn toward this young German with the great scar on his pleasant face. And he was itching to know about that scar. Every day, after coming in from dinner, Richter lighted a great brown meerschaum, and read the St. Louis 'Anzeiger' and the 'Westliche Post'. Often he sang quietly to himself: "Deutschlands Sohne Laut ertone Euer Vaterlandgesang. Vaterland!
Now he took the handsome meerschaum pipe from his mouth, from which he had been puffing smoke slowly, and said in a cold, yet quiet voice, "How long you been waitin', Buck?" "A month. He's overdue near that. He always comes down to winter at Fort o' Comfort, with his string of half-breeds, an' Injuns, an' the dogs." "No chance to get him at the Fort?" "It ain't so certain.
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