First a discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface.

Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see,--as true in the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October! And then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that hang around it as the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina! [Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for _I_ DO NOT, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check.

On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw.

It is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's "Triumph of Galatea." It came to me in an ancient shagreen case,--how old it is I do not know,--but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time.
If you are curious, you shall see it any day.

Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay.