Ask a china maniac
to let you have afternoon tea out of his Old Chelsea, and you will learn
some home truths as to the durability of human friendships. The glory of
the pipe, as Tress had suggested, lay in its carving. Not that I claim
that it was beautiful, any more than I make such a claim for the carving
on the box, but, as Tress said in his note, it was curious.
The stem and the bowl were quite plain, but on the edge of the bowl was
perched some kind of lizard. I told myself it was an octopus when I first
saw it, but I have since had reason to believe that it was some almost
unique member of the lizard tribe. The creature was represented as
climbing over the edge of the bowl down toward the stem, and its legs, or
feelers, or tentacula, or whatever the things are called, were, if I may
use a vulgarism, sprawling about "all over the place." For instance, two
or three of them were twined about the bowl, two or three of them were
twisted round the stem, and one, a particularly horrible one, was uplifted
in the air, so that if you put the pipe in your mouth the thing was
pointing straight at your nose.
Not the least agreeable feature about the creature was that it was
hideously lifelike. It appeared to have been carved in amber, but some
coloring matter must have been introduced, for inside the amber the
creature was of a peculiarly ghastly green.
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