OLD PIPES FOR NEW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 275, 20 November 1935, Page 6

OLD PIPES FOR NEW.

Gone nre the days of meerschaum pipes, lavishly carved and carefully coloured; they belong* to the period of smoking cape with tassels and possibly of cm-pot slippers richly embroidered by admiring female friends and relations. Nevertheless (save the "Manchester Guardian") a pipe is a possession that still demands a certain sense of responsibility; acquaintance with it must ripen into friendship, for tlio new pipe is harsh to the unfamiliar incense of burning tobacco. Kven an the new car requires to be "run in." so tlio new pipe lias to bo "smoked ill," a process which does not commend itself to the average smoker. So a West Country baronet who is a great pipe smoker has invented for himself some sort of instrument which turns new. raw pipes into old, ripe or.es, and he has found his gadget so satisfactory that ho lias sent it to earn a wider fame at the Exhibition of Inventions in London. We are not told the exact details of hie invention. It might, of course, be worked by a' system of bellows that would puff the new pipe into perfection without bringing- its immature and acrid fumes into contact with the sensitive human palate'. Or possibly some sort of hookah or hubble-bubble would extract the harsher flavour and yet permit the experimenter to taete the tobacco he hud purchased; or he may have perfected sonic searing flame which turns the new pipe into an old one in the twinkling of an eye.

But if these tilings can be done, why do not the pipe makers do them before they hand their wares over to the pipe smokers? It almost looks a* though their customers must enjoy the professed pains and penalties that attach to their addiction and would feel that some sort of adventure had gone out of existence if the old ordeal did not arrive with the new pipe.