Word: piped
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Ceremonially blowing smoke to the four winds, Mayan priests puffed their pipes to please the gods; the Sioux passed around the calumet to seal the peace; 16th century Frenchman Jean Nicot (whose name is immortalized in the word nicotine) promoted pipe smoking as a sure cure for ulcers; and 19th century authors rhapsodized like Bulwer-Lytton: "A pipe, it is a great soother, a pleasant comforter. Blue devils fly before its honest breath. It ripens the brain, it opens the heart, and the man who smokes thinks like a Samaritan...
...despite the perennial popularity of Sherlock Holmes, dripping shag tobacco from his well-blackened clay pipe; despite the graceful pipemanship of Bing Crosby; even despite the theories of Freud about what pipe smoking really means-pipe smoking is on the decline...
When cigarettes were first indicted as a possible villain in producing lung cancer, pipemakers anticipated a wholesale swing to the relatively exonerated pipe. No such thing happened. On the contrary, cigarette sales zoomed on upwards to record heights for five successive years. Over 528 billion cigarettes were turned out in 1961, up 26% from 1950. The sale of pipe tobacco was scarcely checked in its long decline. Only 75 million pounds of pipe tobacco were sold in 1961, compared with about 210 million pounds in 1920, when there were 77 million fewer people...
Tobaccomen blame high pressure living, war years in which thousands of G.I. pipe smokers switched to more easily portable cigarettes, even the vogue for tighter suits which make pipe-and-pouch bulges bulgier. "We're striking back." says Executive Director Jerry Nagler of the Pipe and Tobacco Council. "We have lots of plans in the works." Among them...
Moral: (Food For Thought) if you don't carry a gun--keep a holster & pipe on hand. They may have mugged & robbed me & may have killed me. Who knows? Jack ("Uncle Jack") Levine, Associated with Leavitt & Peirce