Then I got a new amber mouth-piece for my first love.

In a week I had bitten that through too, and in an over-anxious attempt to file off the ragged edges I broke the screw.
Moralists have said that the smoker who has no thought but for his pipe never breaks it; that it is he only who while smoking concentrates his mind on some less worthy object that sends his teeth through the amber.
This may be so; for I am a philosopher, and when working out new theories I may have been careless even of that which inspired them most.
After this second accident nothing went well with me or with my pipe.
I took the mouthpieces out of other pipes and fixed them on to the Mermaid.

In a little while one of them became too wide; another broke as I was screwing it more firmly in.

Then the bowl cracked at the rim and split at the bottom.

This was an annoyance until I found out what was wrong and plugged up the fissures with sealing-wax.