Pipefuls

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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 BENET

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?