The pipe, of the corncob variety, was very aged and black.
Bok asked him whether it was the only pipe he had.
"Oh, no," Mark answered, "I have several.

But they're all like this.
I never smoke a new corncob pipe.

A new pipe irritates the throat.

No corncob pipe is fit for anything until it has been used at least a fortnight." "How do you break in a pipe, then ?" asked Bok.
"That's the trick," answered Mark Twain.

"I get a cheap man--a man who doesn't amount to much, anyhow: who would be as well, or better, dead--and pay him a dollar to break in the pipe for me.