Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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From a schism in tobacco-pipes, Knickerbocker dates the rise of parties in the Niew Nederlandts. “The rich and self-important burghers, who had made their fortunes, and could afford to be lazy, adhered to the ancient fashion, and formed a kind of aristocracy, known as the Long-pipes; while the lower order, adopting the reform of William Kieft, as more convenient in their handicraft employments, were branded with the plebeian name of Short-pipes.” Who may be considered as the founder of the English Short-pipe school, is more difficult to determine; it is nevertheless, of late years, a very popular one, and considerably outnumbers the aristocracy of Long-pipes. The variety of these instruments is almost infinite. There are all kinds of short clays, cutties, St. Omer, Gambier, meerschaum washed, coloured clay, and fancy clay of all shapes, grotesque, uncouth, stupid, and in some instances graceful. Pipes also of wood, of black ebony, green ebony, brier-root—whatever that may be—cherry-root, tulip-wood, rosewood, &c. Glass pipes, with reservoirs and without, smokers’ friends, and, if we may judge from their size, tobacconists’ friends; meerschaum bowls, massa bowls, porcelain bowls, clay bowls, of uncouth and monstrous heads, with eyes of glass and enamelled teeth, together with short stems and mounts for broken clays. Add to these, one knows not how many kinds of tobacco-pots, from a smiling damsel in all the glories of crinoline, to the dissevered head of Poor Dog Tray. The windows of retail tobacconists now-a-days more resemble a toy-shop, or a fancy stall from an arcade or bazaar, than the sober-looking windows of a retailer half a century ago. Mr. Frank Fowler informs us that the same tastes have migrated to Australia. “The cutty is of all shapes, sizes, and shades. Some are negro heads, set with rows of very white teeth; some are mermaids, showing their more presentable halves up the front of the bowls, and stowing away their weedy extremities under the stems. Some are Turkish caps, some are Russian skulls, some are houris, some are Empresses of the French, some are Margaret Catchpoles, some are as small as my lady’s thimble, others as large as an old Chelsea tea-cup. Everybody has one, from the little pinafore schoolboy, who has renounced his hardbake for his Hardham’s, to the old veteran who came out with the second batch of convicts, and remembers George Barrington’s prologue. Clergymen get up their sermons over the pipe; members of parliament walk the verandah of the Sydney House of Legislature, with the black bowl gleaming between their teeth. One of the metropolitan representatives was seriously ill just before I left, from having smoked forty pipes of Latakia at one sitting. A cutty bowl, like a Creole’s eye, is most prized when blackest. Some smokers wrap the bowls reverently in leather during the process of colouring; others buy them ready stained, and get (I suppose) the reputation of accomplished whiffers at once. Every young swell glories in his cabinet of dirty clay pipes. A friend of mine used to call a box of the little black things his ‘Stowe collection.’ Tobacco, I should add here, is seldom sold in a cut form; each man carries a cake about with him, like a card-case; each boy has his stick of Cavendish, like so much candy. The cigars usually smoked are Manillas, which are as cheap and good as can be met with in any part of the world. Lola Montez, during her Australian tour, spoke well of them. What stronger puff could they have than hers?”