A corncob pipe is a humble badge of philosophy, an evidence of tolerance and even humor.  It requires patience and good cheer, for it is slow to “break in.”  Those who meditate bestial and brutal designs against the weak and innocent do not smoke it.  Probably Hindenburg never saw one.  Missouri’s reputation for incredulity may be due to the corncob habit.  One who is accustomed to consider an argument over a burning nest of tobacco, with the smoke fuming upward in a placid haze, will not accept any dogma too immediately.

There is a singular affinity among those who smoke corncobs.  A Missouri meerschaum whose bowl is browned and whose fiber stem is frayed and stringy with biting betrays a meditative and reasonable owner.  He will have pondered all aspects of life and be equally ready to denounce any of them, but without bitterness.  If you see a man on a street corner smoking a cob it will be safe to ask him to watch the baby a minute while you slip around the corner.  You would even be safe in asking him to lend you a five.  He will be safe, too, because he won’t have it.

Think, therefore, of the charm of a town where corncob pipes are the chief industry.  Think of them stacked up in bright yellow piles in the warehouse.  Think of the warm sun and the wholesome sweetness of broad acres that have grown into the pith of the cob.  Think of the bright-eyed Missouri maidens who have turned and scooped and varnished and packed them.  Think of the airy streets and wide pavements of Boonville, and the corner drug stores with their shining soda fountains and grape-juice bottles.  Think of sitting out on that bluff on a warm evening, watching the broad shimmer of the river slipping down from the sunset, and smoking a serene pipe while the local flappers walk in the coolness wearing crisp, swaying gingham dresses.  That’s the kind of town we like to think about.

MAKING MARATHON SAFE FOR THE URCHIN

The Urchin and I have been strolling about Marathon on Sunday mornings for more than a year, but not until the gasolineless Sabbaths supervened were we really able to examine the village and see what it is like.  Previously we had been kept busy either dodging motors or admiring them as they sped by.  Their rich dazzle of burnished enamel, the purring hum of their great tires, evokes applause from the Urchin.  He is learning, as he watches those flashing chariots, that life truly is almost as vivid as the advertisements in the Ladies’ Home Journal, where the shimmer of earthly pageant first was presented to him.

Marathon is a village so genteel and comely that the Urchin and I would like to have some pictures of it for future generations, particularly as we see it on an autumn morning when, as I say, the motors are kenneled and the landscape has ceased to vibrate.  In the douce benignance of equinoctial sunshine we gaze about us with eyes of inventory.  Where my observation errs by too much sentiment the Urchin checks me by his cooler power of ratiocination.