Some
were attired in ordinary citizen's dress, but many looked odd
enough with their short woolen coats, wide breeches, and big
silver buckles. These seemed to Ben like little boys who had, by
a miracle, sprung suddenly into manhood and were forced to wear
garments that their astonished mothers had altered in a hurry.
He noticed, too, that nearly all the men had pipes as they passed
him, whizzing and smoking like so many locomotives. There was
every variety of pipes, from those of common clay to the most
expensive meerschaums mounted in silver and gold. Some were
carved into extraordinary and fantastic shapes, representing
birds, flowers, heads, bugs, and dozens of other things; some
resembled the "Dutchman's pipe" that grows in our American woods;
some were red and many were of a pure, snowy white; but the most
respectable were those which were ripening into a shaded brown.
The deeper and richer the brown, of course, the more honored the
pipe, for it was proof that the owner, if honestly shading it,
was deliberately devoting his manhood to the effort. What pipe
would not be proud to be the object of such a sacrifice!
For a while Ben skated on in silence.
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