Thus we have put together a right noble pipe, and will now take a peep at the apparatus requisite to its enjoyment. The most indispensable, certainly, is tobacco. To lecture on the various qualities of this article, we want both patience and sufficient knowledge. How many descending steps are there between the finest Knaster, and the weed which fumes up rank and qualmish from the pipe of the wood-cutter! The worst sort is jocosely called "three times round the body for a farthing," which may fittingly be smoked over that liquor called "three-men wine," because it would require two men to hold a man while the third forced this Tartarian wine down his throat.
Much luxury is expended over that little ornamental repository for the preservation of this precious commodity--the so-called tobacco-casket Abroad the student carries the narcotic herb with him in a tobacco-pouch, which is often ornamented with embroidery by some fair hand. The long and thickly-piled together strips of paper (spills), which are used to light the pipes, are in Germany known by the name of "Fidibus," and its derivation from "fidelibus patribus," the jolly monks, shows that these good fellows did not despise the enjoyment of tobacco, when they could in private breathe its beatifying fumes.
Another yet similar derivation is the following. At the time when the students were forbidden to smoke tobacco, they had private smoking-companies, where the host sent round a Latin bill with the following contents, which the student who agreed to go to it, undersigned not with his real, but with a purposely assumed name:
Fid. Ibus.
S. D. N. H.
Hodie hora vii. a. v. s.
That is, Fidelibus fratribus salutem dicit N. hospes. Hodie hora septima (apparebit in museo meo, herba Nicotiana) abunde vobis satisfaciam. As soon as they all were assembled, they placed themselves in a circle, and each lit his pipe with his bill, as a Fid....ibus offering--whence arose the term Fidibus.
The inconsumable Fidibus is a new invention with which our English friend, Mr. Traveller, was struck in the lodging of Freisleben, and in his notes thereon very graphically described.
When we have smoked a while, it is necessary to press together the mass which has expanded itself proudly in the pipe head, and for this purpose is used a sort of stamper, or stopper, also furnished with a knob of wood. This instrument has received a variety of names. In Heidelberg it is called Dentsch,--a name coined for the cogent reason that it will rhyme with mensch, without which the poet would find himself in what the Americans call, an "eternal fix." Another name is Melibocus, after the mountain on the Bergstrasse. In this instrument there is generally contained a wire, which you can draw out in order to give air to the clogged up part of your pipe. It is thus at once a stopper and an opener.
The process of smoking is a species of distillation, whereby the water-sack, as a receiver, takes off the fluid product, while the fume passes into the still-head, and is thence conveyed to the mouth, where it achieves its narcotic purposes, and thence is again discharged into the air. It is to be expected that this chemical apparatus will from time to time require cleaning; and for this end is used a small feather for the shorter tubes, and for the longer ones the fine clear stalk of a peculiarly tall and strong kind of grass (Luzula maxima) which grows in the woods. Some poor imp, unfit for other work, undertakes to furnish the smoker with this necessary article, and those who gather them in the woody hills round Heidelberg, even extend their trade in them as far as Mannheim and Karlsruhe. When the stranger mounts up to the ruins of Heidelberg castle, he is often accosted by this Binsen-Bube or Blumen-Bube, Rush-boy or Flower-boy, as he is called, who, with most graceful obeisances, presents him with a small nosegay, and patiently waits for a substantial token of its acceptance. This is the great gatherer and furnisher of the Binsen, or rush, as it is unbotanically called, for the fumiferous public.
The cigar, which we must not forget, is much less affected by the student. Yet he sometimes prefers it to a pipe, over a cup of coffee; and then is he accustomed, with great satisfaction, to drive forth the smoke through his nostrils, in order to make himself thoroughly conscious of his luxury.
If the reader has held out actually to the end of this dissertation on smoking, then we are very certain that the general and determined smoking in Germany has arrested his attention. We do not pretend to offer a reason for the remarkable growth of the practice of smoking amongst us during the last ten or twenty years. It seems to us somewhat far-fetched to assign as the cause, as has been done by a learned German writer, that it is a natural necessity to dull and modify to a healthful degree the all too dominant nervous sensibility and imaginative susceptibility of the over-refined, and especially of the learned, man.