Athwart the smoke of burning weeds

can at once realize how much greater is the volume of smoke from cigars and cigarettes than would result from the smoking of a like number of pipes.  It cannot, therefore, be that pipes are barred because of a supposed greater effect upon the atmosphere of the room.  The only conclusion the observer can come to is, that the fashionable attitude towards pipes is one of the last relics of the old social attitude—­the attitude of Georgian and Early Victorian days—­towards smoking of any kind.  The cigar and the cigarette were first introduced among the upper classes of society, and their use has spread downward.  They have broken down many barriers, and in many places, and under many and divers conditions, the pipe has followed triumphantly in their wake; but the last ditch of the old prejudice has been found in the convention, which, in certain places and at certain times, admits the cigar and cigarette of fashionable origin, but bars the entry of the plebeian pipe—­the pipe which for two centuries was practically the only mode of smoking used or known.

An article which appeared in the Morning Post of February 20, 1913, may be regarded as a sign of the times.  It was entitled “A Plea for the Pipe:  By one who Smokes it.”  “I should like,” said the writer, “pipe-men of all degrees to ask themselves whether the time has not really arrived to enter a protest against the convention which forces the pipe into a position of inferiority, and exalts to a pinnacle of undeserved pre-eminence the cigar, and still more the cigarette ... why should it be considered a mark of vulgarity, of plebeianism, to inhale tobacco-smoke through the stem of a briar, and the hall-mark of good breeding to finger a cigar or dally with that triviality and travesty of the adoration of My Lady Nicotine—­a cigarette?” To these questions there can be but one answer:  and the future, there can be little doubt, will emphasize that answer, and abolish the unmeaning convention.

The prejudice against the pipe is not confined to places of indoor resort.  There are many men who smoke pipes within doors, who yet would not care to be seen in London smoking a pipe in the street, or in the park.  In some circumstances this is quite intelligible.  The writer of the Morning Post article remarked with much force and good sense that “Apart from social environment, there is a certain affinity between pipes and clothes.  It is considered ‘bad form’ for a man in a frock-coat and silk hat to be seen smoking a pipe in the streets.  If you are wearing a bowler hat and a lounge suit you may walk along with a briar protruding from your lips, and no one will think ill of you.  If you are a son of toil garbed in your habit as you work, there is nothing incongruous in a well-seasoned clay or a ‘nose-warmer,’ which, for convenience, you carry upside down.  Not so very long ago it was considered unseemly to smoke a pipe at all in the street unless you belonged to the humbler orders, who inhale their nicotine through the stem of a clay and expectorate with a greater sense of freedom than of responsibility.”