In the last four years there has grown up a new school of pipe-smokers, by which (I suspect) I am hardly regarded as a pipe-smoker at all.  This school buys its pipes always at one particular shop; its pupils would as soon think of smoking a pipe without the white spot as of smoking brown paper.  So far are they from smoking brown paper that each one of them has his tobacco specially blended according to the colour of his hair, his taste in revues, and the locality in which he lives.  The first blend is naturally not the ideal one.  It is only when he has been a confirmed smoker for at least three months, and knows the best and worst of all tobaccos, that his exact requirements can be satisfied.

However, it is the pipe rather than the tobacco which marks him as belonging to this particular school.  He pins his faith, not so much to its labour-saving devices as to the white spot outside, the white spot of an otherwise aimless life.  This tells the world that it is one of the pipes.  Never was an announcement more superfluous.  From the moment, shortly after breakfast, when he strikes his first match to the moment, just before bed-time, when he strikes his hundredth, it is obviously the pipe which he is smoking.

For whereas men of an older school, like myself, smoke for the pleasure of smoking, men of this school smoke for the pleasure of pipe-owning—­of selecting which of their many white-spotted pipes they will fill with their specially-blended tobacco, of filling the one so chosen, of lighting it, of taking it from the mouth to gaze lovingly at the white spot and thus letting it go out, of lighting it again and letting it go out again, of polishing it up with their own special polisher and putting it to bed, and then the pleasure of beginning all over again with another white-spotted one.  They are not so much pipe-smokers as pipe-keepers; and to have spoken as I did just now of their owning pipes was wrong, for it is they who are in bondage to the white spot.  This school is founded firmly on four years of war.  When at the age of eighteen you are suddenly given a cheque-book and called “Sir,” you must do something by way of acknowledgment.  A pipe in the mouth makes it clear that there has been no mistake—­you are undoubtedly a man.  But you may be excused for feeling after the first pipe that the joys of smoking have been rated too high, and for trying to extract your pleasure from the polish on the pipe’s surface, the pride of possessing a special mixture of your own, and such-like matters, rather than from the actual inspiration and expiration of smoke.  In the same way a man not fond of reading may find delight in a library of well-bound books.  They are pleasant to handle, pleasant to talk about, pleasant to show to friends.  But it is the man without the library of well-bound books who generally does most of the reading.