Divine Nicotians

Our attention has recently been drawn to the remarkable increase in the number and variety of pipes which are to be seen among students of this college. The outstanding nature of this phenomenon has impelled us to make some comments upon the subject.

If you were to ask one of our pipe smoking comrades the reason for his habit, you would more than likely be regaled with a vague and somewhat evasive discourse to the effect that "pipes have a fine rich, nutty flavour, and anyway cigarettes disintegrate in the mouth." looking at this matter from a purely objective point of view, we have decided that there may indeed be a veritable wealth of conscious and subconscious reasons in explanation of the fad which, if known, would give a most revealing picture of the less obvious traits of many of the characters about us. Perhaps a research worker in psychology could profitably-consider this intriguing and little-explored field. Such an experimenter could probably answer the following query: "What proportion of the adolescent smokers were brought up to suck dummies, and what proportion to chew clothes pegs?" Surely it can be safely forecast that the dummy suckers would predominate greatly, for pipes and dummies both are smelly unhygienic appendages, producing the same type of bovine vacancy on the faces of students and babies alike, while pegs, as everybody knows, are only used to solve the specific problem of cutting teeth. It would also doubtless be found that many students sport pipes because of the superior, bourgeois, after-dinner feeling that bolsters up their ego, when with one hand in a pocket, and the other firmly clutching an illustrative pipe bowl, they stick out their tummies, and mouth those ponderous words of wisdom (?) we so frequently hear at club suppers. On the other hand, the deciding factor with many is that smoking is the fashion of the moment—an insipid and unflattering reason, horribly reminiscent of the foibles and weaknesses of a mere woman in this direction.

This pipe-smoking tendency is particularly noticeable among physics Students. While there have been many advances in physics in recent years, the comparatively important subject of pipe physics appears to have been neglected in an effort to discover the impact of the College's contribution on this branch, we made a study of the types of pipe abounding. We were disappointed. Little initiative has been shown. We are assured by a leading physics lecturer that the first physicist to smoke a pipe did so in order to study cloud effects.

The whole subject of pipes appears at present to be in the very early experimental stage. Most of them follow the conventional common or garden pattern. We should have thought that a physicist with some knowledge of heat engines could have substantially improved the pipe by the addition of condensers, filters, and a self-cleaning stem. After all even a mere Persian hookah contains an efficient system for washing and cooling the smoke before inhalation. In nearly all cases the examples displayed here do not even come up to the normal standard of working. They appear to be always blocked, leaking or otherwise inactive. Their proud owners, in full manly dignity, empty them, take them to pieces, clean them, fill them. In fact, do everything possible to them before attempting to smoke them. When they are ready, an effort is made to light them, but no—something is wrong, the pipe won't draw, and so it is emptied, cleaned and filled ad infinitum.

We feel that, provided the number of these puffers of smoke remains within moderate limits, and provided that we are not obliged to associate closely with any of them, the matter can be happily ignored. However, to those who appear to be perpetually pouring forth clouds of smoke, we can do no better than quote the following, and sincerely hope their future wives (and etc.'s) will take note and act accordingly.

"It is a great inlquitle and againft all humanitle, that the husband [unclear: fhall] not bee afhamed to reduce his delicate wholefome, and cleane complexloned wife, to that extremltle that either fhee muft alfo corrunt her fweete breath therewith, or elfe refolve to live in a perpetuall ftinking torment."

Note.—This article has been slightly abridged.—Editor.