It was still a damp, leaden gray pipe, with two broad seams of clay projecting from it, throughout its entire length. It was ragged too. On these deficiencies my friend began to offer a few pungent remarks; when the workman interrupted him by pointing toward an industrious woman, who seemed to be in a desperate hurry; yet she was not at all excited. My friend suggested that steam must be circulating in her nimble fingers, instead of blood. She smiled at the pleasantry; and said meekly enough, that it was custom. She was as clumsy as I should be when she began—but long, long days of experience—there, sitting before that board, and cutting incessantly those seams that curl so neatly off the rough pipes, give that dexterity, and it is well, perhaps severely, paid for. The work-woman wears a serious, dull face generally. It struck me, as I watched the repetition of her movements, that in their dreadful monotony there must be a deadening influence upon the mind and heart. I even thought that she must find it a relief now and then to break a pipe, or drop one of the glistening steel rods. First, she took up one of the rough pipes, and with a sharp steel instrument, smoothed all the rough clay about the bowl. Then she smoothed the stem with a flat instrument—then she cut the mouthpiece even. Having thus rapidly traveled over the moulder's work, she withdrew the fine steel rod from the tube, blew down the pipe to assure herself that the air passed from the bowl to the mouth-piece, and then carefully added it to a row, placed upon a frame beside her. The finished pipe was hardly deposited in its place before another was in her hands, and in rapid process toward completion.
A roaring fire crackled in the grate, and the heat of the atmosphere was oppressive. Above were more endless rows and galleries of pipes; waiting to be baked, and in a fair way, I thought, of undergoing that process where they lay. I could hear the dull, heavy sounds of the clay-beater's weapon below, and in the rooms the incessant click of the closing moulds. The workmen were proud to show their dexterity, as they well might be. Our friend in the farther corner, as he talked pleasantly to us on various subjects, still carelessly made his clay tadpoles; the woman never paused from her rapid work when she exchanged occasional sentences with a boy who stood near her; and the wife of the manufacturer surveyed the busy scene with sparkling eyes.
I thought once or twice of the damp clay streaming about these workpeople; and of the hard, stern work going on to provide receptacles for lazy men's tobacco. Pipe-clay seemed to force itself every where; about the rafters, on the benches, on the floor, in the walls. My friend's curiosity was soon satisfied: for his anxiety to avoid contact with the raw material of his favorite manufactured article, drove every other consideration from his mind. He vowed that he did not wish to appear in the streets of London in the guise of a miller—that, generally, he preferred a black coat to a piebald one, and that not being a military man, the less pipe-clay he took away in the nap of his clothes, the better. But I had one or two questions to put to the tadpole-maker—not with the view, as my friend stoutly asserted, of writing a sermon, but perhaps with an object sufficiently laudable. I learned that a workman, "keeping to it" twelve hours, can make "four gross and a half" of pipes per day.
My friend was struck with this astonishing fact; and, forthwith, began to prove from this assertion that he ought to have the half-gross he wanted at a very low price indeed. It was only when the workman paused, for the first time, from his work to discuss the beauties of various pipes, that my friend felt himself quite at home in the manufactory. Hereupon, the workman placed a variety of pipes in juxtaposition, and began to talk of their relative excellences and beauties with the tact of an artist. This man was not without a shrewd sense of art; he had his ideal of a tobacco-pipe, as the political dreamer has his ideal of a model state, or a sculptor of his ideal beauty. He had shrewd, unanswerable reasons for a certain roundness in the bowl; his eye wandered critically down the graceful bend of the tube, and his hand tested nicely the finish of the surface. His skill lay, certainly, only in the manufacture of tobacco-pipes; but, still, herein his mind was active, and his taste was cultivated.
"What would become of you if smoking were put down by Act of Parliament?" my friend asked, with a sarcastic air. But the man was a match even for the practiced eccentricity of my companion.
"Why, sir," said the man, "most likely more snuff would be consumed instead, and I should shut up the kiln, and take to making snuffboxes."
My friend was silenced; and, as we walked away from the manufactory, down the dark, narrow streets, he allowed, in a whisper, that there was wisdom in the pipemaker's answer. And then he began to make calculations as to how many people flourish in every country on the bad habits and vices of their fellow-citizens. He wove a chain of terrible length, to show how many men were interested in the drunkenness of the country. A man reeled past us in the imbecile, singing stage of the vice. "That man," said my eccentric friend, "has done the state some service to-night. He has been helping to swell the Excise returns; presently, he will create a disturbance; a policeman will gallantly walk him off to the station-house, and be promoted; his hat will be broken, to the great advantage of a hatter; his shirt front will be torn, to the benefit of some poor, lone sempstress; and there, he has broken his yard of clay, to the advantage of the manufactory we have just left. Delirium tremens will come at last; and with it a surgeon; and, with the surgeon, herbs which are now growing under the burning heat of Indian skies." Thus my eccentric friend ran on, and I did not interrupt him; for, in his words, I detected sparks of light that led us merrily forward to our journey's end, where we found half-a-gross of "yards of clay;" "a perfect picture," according to my friend—lying, all white as snow before us, trimmed, I knew, by the serious, nimble-fingered woman we had seen at her work. And she is at it now, still cutting the seams off, and blowing down the tubes!
HABITS AND CHARACTER OF THE DOG-RIB INDIANS.[7]
Few traces of the stoicism popularly attributed to the red races exist among the Dog ribs; they shrink from pain, show little daring, express their fears without disguise on all occasions, imaginary or real, shed tears readily, and live in constant dread of enemies, bodied and disembodied. Yet all, young and old, enjoy a joke heartily. They are not a morose people, but, on the contrary, when young and in a situation of security, they are remarkably lively and cheerful. The infirmities of age, which press heavily on the savage, render them querulous. They are fond of dancing, but their dance, which is performed in a circle, is without the least pretensions to grace, and is carried on laboriously with the knees and body half bent and a heavy stamping, having the effect of causing the dancers to appear as if they were desirous of sinking into the ground. It is accompanied by a song resembling a chorus of groans, or pretty nearly the deep sigh of a pavier as he brings his rammer down upon the pavement. They are great mimics, and readily ape the peculiarities of any white man; and many of the young men have caught the tunes of the Canadian voyagers, and hum them correctly.
The Dog-ribs are practical socialists; and, as much of the misery they occasionally experience may be traced to this cause, the study of the working of such a system may be instructive in a community like this, whose members owe their condition in the social scale solely to their personal qualities, and not to inheritance, favor, or the other accidents which complicate the results in civilized life. Custom has established among them a practice universally acted upon—that all may avail themselves of the produce of a hunter's energy and skill; and they do not even leave to him the distribution of his own game. When it is known in the camp that deer have been killed, the old men and women of each family sally forth with their sledges, and, tracing up the hunter's footsteps to the carcasses of the animals he has slain, proceed to divide them among themselves, leaving to the proper owner the ribs, which is all that he can claim to himself of right. He has also the tongue, which he takes care to cut out on killing the deer. It is not in the power of these people to restrain their appetites when they have abundance; and the consequence is, that when the chase is successful, all the community feast and grow fat, however little many of the men—and there are not a few idle ones—may have contributed to the common good. The hunter's wife dries the rib-pieces, after cutting out the bone, in the smoke, or over a fire, to carry to a fort for the purposes of trade; but, unless there is a superabundance, little provision is made by the party for a time of scarcity, which is sure to arrive before long; since the deer, when much hunted, move to some other district. Taught by their frequent sufferings on such occasions, the more active hunters frequently withdraw themselves and their families from the knowledge of the drones of the community, leaving them at some fishing station, where, with proper industry, they may subsist comfortably. A fish diet is not, however, agreeable to the palates of these people for any length of time; and, as soon as rumors of a hunter's success reach them—which they do generally much exaggerated by the way—a longing for the flesh-pots is instantly excited, especially among the old, and a general movement to the hunting-ground ensues. If, on their march, the craving multitude discover a hoard of meat stored up by any of the hunting parties, it is devoured on the spot; but they are not always so fortunate. Before they reach the scene of anticipated abundance, the deer may have gone off, followed by the hunters, with uncertain hopes of overtaking them, and nothing remains for the hungry throng, including the old and the lame, but to retrace their steps, with the prospect of many of them perishing by the way, should their stock of food have been quite exhausted. Such occurrences are by no means rare; they came several times under our immediate notice during our winter residence at Fort Confidence, and similar facts are recorded by Mr. Simpson of the same tribe. This gentleman expresses his opinion that the charge made against this nation, of abandoning their infirm aged people and children, had its origin in the sauve qui peut cry raised during a forced retreat from some one of these most injudicious excursions; and I am inclined fully to agree with him; for I witnessed several unquestionable instances of tenderness and affection shown by children to their parents, and of compliance with their whims, much to their own personal inconvenience. The grief they show on the loss of a parent, is often great and of long continuance, and it is the custom, both for men and women, to lament the death of relations for years, by nightly wailings.