Pipe-colorers, who go around coloring pipes or meerschaums, pride themselves on the rapidity with which they are enabled to color a pipe. The following, on "Pipe Colorers," is from "The Tobacco Plant":
Pipe Colorer.
"There are men who pride themselves upon the skill with which they are able to color the pipes they smoke. Some of these are amateurs, who smoke Tobacco only with the view of gratifying that taste for color which is satisfied when a bowl of clay or meerschaum is sufficiently yellowed, browned, or blacked. There are men who care nothing for Tobacco of itself, and would be much more easily and rationally pleased were they to set their pipes upon an easel and paint them with oils and camel's-hair. Others of the class are professional colorers, who hire themselves to pipe-sellers or connoisseurs by the week, or day, or hour, to smoke so many ounces or pounds of strong Tobacco through such and such pipes in such and such a time, with the view of causing such and such stains of Tobacco-juice to make themselves visible on the bowls or stems of those specified pipes. These are mostly old, well-seasoned smokers, to whose existence the weed has become essential; who smoke their own old pipes, which lack artistic coloring, in the intervals when they lay aside the pipes they are employed to color. Another and much smaller section of the class are those who smoke for smoking's sake, and yet are weak enough to nurse some special pipes for show. To such it is a joy to say, when friends are gathered at the festive board 'Look! is not that well colored? I colored it myself.' In such an age as this, when the learned cannot tell us which of our various branches of knowledge and inquiry are sciences and which are not, it may not seem a great anomaly that this pipe-coloring should, by some, be called 'an art.' Nor is it, when we think that there is such an 'art' as blacking shoes; and when we must perforce admit that he who, barber fashion, cuts our hair—and he who, cook-wise, broils the kidney for our mid-day dinner—is an artist. We have not come as yet to give this title to the weaver who watches the loom that weaves our stockings, or to the hammer-man who beats the red-hot horse-shoe on the anvil in a smithy; but even there we designate 'artisans,' and 'artists' may come next. So, hey! for the art of coloring pipes!
"It may not be denied that there is beauty in a well-colored meerschaum; but in the admission lies the contradiction of Keats' well-known line—
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."
For, your meerschaum is a fragile thing, and eminently frangible. This present writer once did see four beauties break within a single moon. And when they break, what previous joy of coloring can over-top the sorrow of their dire destruction? It is a singular difficulty in the way of those who most desire to beautify utility or utilize the beautiful, or show that beauty is most lovely when made practical, that these artistic colorers of pipes are always those who make least use of Tobacco, save for the immediate purpose of obtaining the clay in which it is smoked. Ask such an artist why he smokes, and he will scarcely tell you. His best reason certainly will be, that others smoke, and, as a custom, it becomes him. And when you find an ardent smoker—one who smokes because he likes Tobacco for itself, or finds it useful—who spends his time in tinting pipes, you will have found a rara avis, or a monstrosity. Apart from taste, there are some practical objections to this custom of coloring pipes. Smoking, to be worthy, should be free and unrestrained; while he who colors his pipe is tied by system and confined to rule.
"A pipe to be enjoyable, should be its master's slave; but he who keeps a 'well-colored' pipe is slave thereto. He cannot smoke it as, or when, or where he will. He must not smoke it in a draught, or near a fire; he must not lay it down, or finger it; he must not puff too fast, nor yet too slow. In short, he is the creature of this 'Joss'—this home-made deity—to which he bows down and worships. The pipe-colorers are the Sabbatarians of smoking. Whereas, the pipe was made for man, they treat man as made for the pipe. And thus, as in all cases where the cart is expected to draw the horse, the economy of nature is reversed, and mischief is evolved."