With such a fire it is no use attempting to light a pipe all at once.

Your better course now is to drop little bits of paper into the likely places in the fire, and have a spill ready to apply to the one that lights first.

It is an anxious moment, for they may merely shrivel up sullenly without catching fire, and in that case some men lose their tempers.

Bad to lose your temper over your pipe---- [Illustration] No pipe really ever rivalled the brier in my affections, though I can recall a mad month when I fell in love with two little meerschaums, which I christened Romulus and Remus.

They lay together in one case in Regent Street, and it was with difficulty that I could pass the shop without going in.