rough pipes, give that dexterity, and it is
well, perhaps severely, paid for. The
workwoman wears a serious, dull face generally. It
struck me, as I watched the repetition of her
movements, that in their dreadful monotony
there must be a deadening influence upon the
mind and heart. I even thought that she
must find it a relief now and then to break a
pipe, or drop one of the glistening steel rods.
First, she took up one of the rough pipes, and
with a sharp steel instrument, smoothed all
the rough clay about the bowl. Then she
smoothed the stem with a flat instrument—
then she cut the mouth-piece even. Having
thus rapidly travelled over the moulder's
work, she withdrew the fine steel rod from the
tube, blew down the pipe to assure herself that
the air passed from the bowl to the mouth-
piece, and then carefully added it to a row,
placed upon a frame beside her. The finished
pipe was hardly deposited in its place before
another was in her hands, and in rapid process
towards completion.

A roaring fire crackled in the grate, and
the heat of the atmosphere was oppressive.
Above were more endless rows and
galleries of pipes, waiting to be baked, and in
a fair way, I thought, of undergoing that
process where they lay. I could hear the dull,
heavy sounds of the clay-beater's weapon
below, and in the room the incessant click of
the closing moulds. The workmen were
proud to show their dexterity, as they well
might be. Our friend in the farther corner,
as he talked pleasantly to us on various
subjects, still carelessly made his clay tadpoles;
the woman never paused from her rapid work
when she exchanged occasional sentences with
a boy who stood near her; and the wife of
the manufacturer surveyed the busy scene
with sparkling eyes.

I thought once or twice of the damp clay
streaming about these workpeople; and of
the hard, stern work going on to provide
receptacles for lazy men's tobacco. Pipe-clay
seemed to force itself everywhere; about the
rafters, on the benches, on the floor, in the
walls. My friend's curiosity was soon satisfied;
for his anxiety to avoid contact with the raw
material of his favourite manufactured article,
drove every other consideration from his mind.
He vowed that he did not wish to appear in
the streets of London in the guise of a miller
—that, generally, he preferred a black coat to
a piebald one, and that not being a military
man, the less pipe-clay he took away in the nap
of his clothes, the better. But I had one or
two questions to put to the tadpole-maker;—
not with the view, as my friend stoutly
asserted, of writing a sermon, but perhaps
with an object sufficiently laudable. I learned
that a workman, "keeping to it" twelve
hours, can make "four gross and a half" of
pipes per day.

My friend was struck with this astonishing
fact; and, forthwith, began to prove from
this assertion that he ought to have the half-
gross he wanted at a very low price indeed.
It was only when the workman paused, for
the first time, from his work to discuss the
beauties of various pipes, that my friend felt
himself quite at home in the manufactory,
Hereupon, the workman placed a variety of
pipes in juxta-position, and began to talk of
their relative excellencies and beauties with
the tact of an artist. This man was not
without a shrewd sense of art; he had his
ideal of a tobacco-pipe, as the political
dreamer has his ideal of a model state, or a
sculptor of his ideal beauty. He had shrewd
unanswerable reasons for a certain roundness
in the bowl; his eye wandered critically
down the graceful bend of the tube, and his
hand tested nicely the finish of the surface.
His skill lay, certainly, only in the
manufacture of tobacco-pipes; but, still, herein
his mind was active, and his taste was
cultivated.

"What would become of you if smoking
were put down by Act of Parliament ?" my
friend asked, with a sarcastic air. But the
man was a match even for the practised
eccentricity of my companion.

"Why, sir," said the man, " most likely more
snuff would be consumed instead, and I should
shut up the kiln, and take to making snuff-
boxes."

My friend was silenced; and, as we walked
away from the manufactory, down the dark
narrow streets, he allowed, in a whisper, that
there was wisdom in the pipemaker's answer.
And then he began to make calculations as
to how many people nourish in every country
on the bad habits and vices of their fellow-
citizens. He wove a chain of terrible length,
to show how many men were interested in
the drunkenness of the country. A man reeled
past us in the imbecile, singing stage of the
vice. "That man," said my eccentric friend,
"has done the state some service to-night.
He has been helping to swell the Excise
returns; presently he will create a disturbance;
a policeman will gallantly walk him off
to the station-house, and be promoted; his
hat will be broken, to the great advantage of
a hatter; his shirt front will be torn, to the
benefit of some poor, lone sempstress; and
there, he has broken his yard of clay, to the
advantage of the manufactory we have just
left. Delirium tremens will come at last;
and with it a surgeon; and, with the surgeon,
herbs which are now growing under the
burning heat of Indian skies." Thus my
eccentric friend ran on, and I did not
interrupt him; for, in his words, I detected
sparks of light that led us merrily forward to
our journey's end, where we found half-a-
gross of "yards of clay;" "a perfect picture,"
according to my friend,—lying, all white as
snow before us, trimmed, I knew, by the
serious, nimble-fingered woman we had seen
at her work. And she is at it now, still
cutting the seams off, and blowing down the
tubes!