Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/551

PIOTRK6W PIOTRK.6Wt I. A government of Russia, in Poland, bordering on Kalisz, Warsaw, Radom, Kielce, and Prussian Silesia, and drained by the Pilica and Warta ; area, 4,730 sq. m. ; pop. in 1872, 696,007. The surface is level except in the south, where it is hilly, and the soil mostly sandy. It contains the manufacturing towns of Lodz, Zgierz, and Tomaszow. II. A town, capital of the government, 80 m. S. W. of Warsaw, with which it is connected by rail ; pop. in 1867, 13,633, a considerable portion of whom were Jews. It is one of the oldest Polish towns. It contains a fine town hall, a number of Roman Catholic churches, a free Lutheran church, a synagogue, and a gymna- sium and other schools. Diets were held here in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the supreme tribunal of Great Poland first sat here in 1578. PIOZZI, Hester Lynch, an English authoress, born at Bodvel, Carnarvonshire, Jan. 16, 1740, died in Clifton, near Bristol, May 2, 1821. She was the daughter of John Salusbury, esq., and in 1763 married a wealthy brewer named Thrale. Shortly afterward she formed the ac- quaintance of Dr. Johnson, who was an in- mate of her family from 1766 to 1781, when Mr. Thrale died. In 1784, much against Dr. Johnson's wish, she married an Italian music master named Gabriel Piozzi. She sur- vived her second husband, and in the latter part of her life became attached to the actor William A. Conway, her "Love Letters" to whom were published in 1843. After John- son's death she published " Anecdotes of Dr. Samuel Johnson during the last Twenty Years of his Life" (8vo, 1786), which produced a feud between her and Boswell and the other friends of Johnson. Her other works are: "Letters to and from Dr. Samuel Johnson" (2 vols. 8vo, 1788); " Observations and Reflec- tions made in the course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany" (2 vols. 8vo, 1789) ; " British Synonymy, or an Attempt at regulating the Choice of Words in Familiar Conversation " (2 vols. 8vo, 1794) ; and ^ Re- trospection, or a Review of the most striking and important Events, Characters, Situations, and their Consequences, which the last Eight- een Hundred Years have presented to the view of Mankind" (2 vols. 4to, 1801). ^ The Eoems contributed in 1765 to the " Miscel- mies" published by Anna Maria Williams, especially "The Three Warnings," are con- sidered her best productions. See " Autobiog- raphy, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi," edited, with notes and a memoir, by A. Hay ward (2 vols. 8vo, 1861). PIPE, Tobacco, a bowl and connecting tube made of baked clay, stone, wood, or other material, and used in smoking tobacco. Clay pipes, with slender stems of six inches to a foot or more in length, have been largely sup- plied to commerce from potteries devoted to this manufacture in England, the clay, which is a peculiarly white and adhesive variety, be- ing obtained at Purbeck in Dorsetshire, and at PIPE 535 Newton Abbot in Devonshire. They are also largely manufactured in Holland, and of a finer quality in France. The manner of making a clay pipe is briefly as follows. The clay being worked and tempered by the proper admixture of water, a child rolls from a ball a slender cylinder with his hands and a spatula, for the stem ; a small lump is attached to one end of this for the bowl. The whole is then placed in a folding iron or brass mould, and a wire is laid in the centre of the stem. A plug forms the hollow of the bowl. After being subjected to pressure and allowed to remain long enough to set, the moulded pipe is removed, dressed, and baked in a kiln, which is usually of a capacity to fire about 50 gross in from 8 to 12 hours. On the American continent pipes have been in use from very remote periods. They are found in the ancient mounds of the west, elab- orately carved in stone into fanciful shapes, often resembling various animals of the coun- try. In northern New York and in Cayuga co. they are frequently discovered in ploughing. Some are of soapstone and others of baked clay. On the summit of the dividing ridge be- tween the St. Peter's and the Missouri rivers, called the Coteau des Prairies, and in the lati- tude of St. Anthony's falls, the Indians have long procured a peculiar variety of red stea- tite or soapstone, of which all the red stone pipes of that region are made. Catlin was shown the spot at the base of a long vertical wall of quartz, which lay in horizontal strata, the pipestone layers spreading under the ad- joining prairie land of the ridge, whence it was obtained by digging a few feet in depth. He judged from the great extent of the excava- tions, and from the graves and ancient fortifi- cations, that the place must have been frequent- ed by different tribes of Indians for many cen- turies. The pipes made of this stone are heavy, and usually rather plain, decorated by bands and ornaments of lead, which appear to have been run into depressions and then smoothed down. The stems are long and curiously carved sticks of hard wood, sometimes flat, frequent- ly ornamented with gayly-colored feathers of birds and horse hair dyed scarlet. The most elaborate pipes are those of the Asiatics, espe- cially the Persians and Turks. (See MEEE- SCHAUM.) The bowls are large and heavy, not intended to be held in the hand or carried about, and the stems are several ^ feet long, sometimes made in part of spiral wire covered with a thin impervious coating of leather or other substance, so that this portion is very flexible. The mouthpiece is of ivory, silver, or amber, the last being preferred and much the most expensive. The principal portion of the amber product of Prussia is applied to this use, and some of the mouthpieces command very large prices. The eastern hookah is a pipe of extraordinary size, and an instrument of such importance in the courts of the princes that a special officer is appointed to take care of it, and present the mouthpiece to his mas-