in a chamber of eastern exposure; let there be hominy and cream, and if
possible, brown sugar. There follow scrambled eggs, shirred to a
lemon-yellow, with toast sliced in triangles, fresh, unsalted butter,
and Scotch bitter marmalade. Let there be without fail a platter of hot
bacon, curly, juicy, fried to the debatable point where softness is
overlaid with the faintest crepitation of crackle, of crispyness. If hot
Virginia corn pone is handy, so much the better. And coffee, two-thirds
hot milk, also with brown sugar. It must be permissible to call for a
second serving of the scrambled eggs; or, if this is beyond the budget,
let there be a round of judiciously grilled kidneys, with mayhap a
sprinkle of mushrooms, grown in chalky soil. That is the kind of
breakfast they used to serve in Eden before the fall of man and the
invention of innkeepers with their crass formulae.

After such a breakfast, if one may descend into a garden of plain turf,
mured about by an occluding wall, with an alley of lime trees for sober
pacing: then and there is the fit time and place for the first pipe of
the day. Pack your mixture in the bowl; press it lovingly down with the
cushion of the thumb; see that the draught is free--and then for your
_säckerhets tändstickor!_ A day so begun is well begun, and sin will
flee your precinct. Shog, vile care! The smoke is cool and blue and
tasty on the tongue; the arch of the palate is receptive to the fume;
the curling vapour ascends the chimneys of the nose. Fill your cheeks
with the excellent cloudy reek, blow it forth in twists and twirls. The
first pipe!

But, as I was saying, joy ends not here. Granted that the
after-breakfast smoke excels in savour, succeeding fumations grow in
mental reaction. The first pipe is animal, physical, a matter of pure
sensation. With later kindlings of the weed the brain quickens, begins