"This is a bachelors' banquet, gentlemen," said the Governor,
filling a pipe to the brim. "We will take fair advantage of the
absence of ladies to-day, and offer incense to the good Manitou who
first gave tobacco for the solace of mankind."
The gentlemen were all, as it chanced, honest smokers. Each one
took a pipe from the stand and followed the Governor's example,
except Peter Kalm, who, more philosophically, carried his pipe with
him--a huge meerschaum, clouded like a sunset on the Baltic. He
filled it deliberately with tobacco, pressed it down with his finger
and thumb, and leaning back in his easy chair after lighting it,
began to blow such a cloud as the portly Burgomaster of Stockholm
might have envied on a grand council night in the old Raadhus of the
city of the Goths.
They were a goodly group of men, whose frank, loyal eyes looked
openly at each other across the hospitable table. None of them but
had travelled farther than Ulysses, and, like him, had seen strange
cities and observed many minds of men, and was as deeply read in the
book of human experience as ever the crafty king of Ithaca.
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