Pipefuls

叚

Pipefuls, by Christopher Morley

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Title: Pipefuls
Author: Christopher Morley

Release Date: September 21, 2007 [eBook #22699]
Language: English
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PIPEFULS
* * * * *
Other Books by the Author
PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
SHANDYGAFF
MINCE PIE
KATHLEEN
SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
THE ROCKING HORSE
HIDE AND SEEK
TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA
* * * * *

PIPEFULS
by
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
[Illustration]
Illustrated by Walter Jack Duncan

Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1920
Copyright, 1920, by Doubleday, Page & Company All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THREE MEN
HULBERT FOOTNER EUGENE SAXTON WILLIAM ROSE BENéT
BECAUSE, IF I MENTIONED ONLY ONE OF THEM, I WOULD HAVE TO WRITE BOOKS TO INSCRIBE TO THE OTHER TWO

PREFACE
Sir Thomas Browne said that Eve was "edified out of the rib of Adam." This little book was edified (for the most part) out of the ribs of two friendly newspapers, The New York Evening Post and The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. To them, and to The Bookman, Everybody's, and The Publishers' Weekly, I am grateful for permission to reprint.
Tristram Shandy said, "When a man is hemm'd in by two indecorums, and must commit one of 'em let him chuse which he will, the world will blame him." Now it is one indecorum to let this collection of small sketches go out (as they do) unrevised and just as they assaulted the defenceless reader of the daily prints; and the other indecorum would be to take fragments of this kind too gravely, and attempt by more careful disposition of their pallid members to arrange them into some appearance of painless decease. As Gilbert Chesterton said (I wish I could say, on a similar occasion): "Their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite."
These sketches gave me pain to write; they will give the judicious patron pain to read; therefore we are quits. I think, as I look over their slattern paragraphs, of that most tragic hour--it falls about 4 P. M. in the office of an evening newspaper--when the unhappy compiler tries to round up the broodings of the day and still get home in time for supper. And yet perhaps the will-to-live is in them, for are they not a naked exhibit of the antics a man will commit in order to earn a living? In extenuation it may be pleaded that none of them are so long that they may not be mitigated by an accompanying pipe of tobacco.
THE AUTHOR.
Roslyn, Long Island, July, 1920.

CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface vii
On Making Friends 3
Thoughts on Cider 10
One-Night Stands 18
The Owl Train 25
Safety Pins 29
Confessions of a "Colyumist" 34
Moving 42
Surf Fishing 48
"Idolatry" 52
The First Commencement Address 60
The Downfall of George Snipe 63
Meditations of a Bookseller 66
If Buying a Meal Were Like Buying a House 71
Adventures in High Finance 74
On Visiting Bookshops 78
A Discovery 83
Silas Orrin Howes 91
Joyce Kilmer 97
Tales of Two Cities 109
I. Philadelphia: An Early Train Ridge Avenue The University and the Urchin Pine Street Pershing in Philadelphia Fall Fever Two Days Before Christmas In West Philadelphia Horace Traubel
II. New York: The Anatomy of Manhattan Vesey Street Brooklyn Bridge Three Hours for Lunch Passage from Some Memoirs First Lessons in Clowning House Hunting Long Island Revisited On Being in a Hurry Confessions of a Human Globule Notes on a Fifth Avenue Bus Sunday Morning Venison Pasty Grand Avenue, Brooklyn
On Waiting for the Curtain to Go Up 236
Musings of John Mistletoe 240
The World's Most Famous Oration 242
On Laziness 244
Teaching the Prince to Take Notes 249
A City Notebook 253
On Going to Bed 270

PIPEFULS

ON MAKING FRIENDS
[Illustration]
Considering that most friendships are made by mere hazard, how is it that men find themselves equipped and fortified with just the friends they need? We have heard of men who asserted that they would like to have more money, or more books, or more pairs of pyjamas; but we have never heard of a man saying that he did not have enough friends. For, while one can never have too many friends, yet those one has are always enough. They satisfy us completely. One has never met a man who would say, "I wish I had a friend who would combine the good humour of A, the mystical enthusiasm of B, the love of doughnuts which is such an endearing