Thank goodness there is no military application for pipe smoking, or else dreary scientists would lay bare every useful myth, fable, and legend about briar using meticulous methods of science.
As it is, we are free to philosophize about the mysteries of briar, secure we cannot ever be proven wrong.
Our briar pipes are simply a miracle of modern consumer marketing, and haven’t essentially changed in about a century or more.
No king that ever sat on his throne had more luxurious and beautiful gadgets to play with than me, and every one was carved from a burl that grows on a root of a shrub on rocky hillsides around the rim of the Mediterranean.
These burls must be harvested, then boiled in water, dried out, then sawed into ebechons or plateaux and selected and carved.
And they need a rubber stem, too.
Countless millions of these briar baubles have been sold over the years, and virtually everybody that plays with one agrees that after a dozen or two smokes they all get better, for a long indefinite period.
Why doesn’t every pipe, I mean one hundred per cent, get smoked all the way down for at least a dozen times?
I know this cures the briar all the way out, and the pipe smokes better afterwards.
Yet again, I’m fully breaking in a gorgeous, huge Dublin Tilshead and another birdseye and straight grain Danske Club Brandy alllll the way down.
Even high toned pipe smokers are lazy, or else they hate the taste of briar so much they stop break in at the last quarter inch.
Lee could only make so many pipes, and not everybody bought a Lee.
Otherwise it’s not any fun to smoke one all the way down a dozen times, but you’ll be happier with your whistle if you do.
