Chapter IV: Part 4

The infernal phrase slipped out in spite of us, in a voice which we in vain endeavored to make assured. It was an absurd predicament. All that was lacking was a parson and that tum-tum-tiddee thing from "Lohengrin."

"But isn't it a little loose?" she persisted. Then she took it off and tried on a few more. By this time three or four other girls had come up, and were inspecting us with a detached and somewhat contemptuous interest--all except a little fool who blushed and giggled. If the maternal one hadn't had such a tight hold on our finger, we would have run. We could feel the perspiration sizzling on our burning cheeks.

"Ah, that's better," she said at last, after she had tried on about fifteen. "Men always like them tight, you know. And now you want some thread, don't you?--some nice, strong, black and white thread."

We did, but we wouldn't have admitted it for anything in this world--or the world to come either. Not if we had to fasten our suspenders with clothes-pins. We simply seized that infernal thimble and hurried away in such a blind agony of shame that we forgot our change and nearly knocked a floor-walker down.

Self-possession--gawd!

*Raiment and Mere Clothes*

Women, of course, dress to annoy one another. We wouldn't be guilty of a truism of this nature, if it were not that a lot of worthy people have gone about lately talking and writing and warning from pulpits as though women dressed for the express purpose of luring the minds of men from the contemplation of the higher and more spiritual things to which they are naturally inclined.

There has even been a Papal Bull--or if not a real honest-to-goodness Bull, at least a good husky yearling of the sort known as an Encyclical--condemning slit skirts and demi-tasse waists and the dances people do in them, on the ground that they put in masculine minds ideas that wouldn't be there naturally. This, however, shows how little the Vatican knows about feminine psychology--though their ignorance is naturally very much to their credit.

In the first place, no lady would do such a thing--would you, girls? In the second, the average man is too unobservant. And in the third, the women are too busy considering how to "put it over" one another, to have time to worry about the effect of the things they wear--or don't--on their male _entourage_ (with the accent on the "--rawzh," the Society Editor assures us). As we said above with epigrammatic force and brilliancy, women dress to annoy one another. The mere fact that someone else or several may have said the same thing before does not lessen the truth of the aphorism or the pleasure we take in it.

Whatever their motive, women devote a lot of thought, time, and some man's money to the subject of dress. Most people are agreed on this. With men, however, it is supposed to be very different. There is a curious theory that men don't give a dern--whatever that may amount to--about their clothes. People generally seem to have an idea that a man waits till his suit is torn, or so shiny that he gives the effect of an animated heliograph, before he orders another. And when he does, he is supposed to rush in to his tailor for half a minute between important business calls, or he rings him up on the 'phone.

"Send me up a new suit," he shouts, or something to this hasty effect. "What color?--oh, any old color you got. Something that will wear a long time. Solong!"

That is the way most women and a few men think the average man buys his clothes. But they are wrong. If you want to know how wrong, you have only to go into a tailor's place, Friend Reader--supposing you keep a tailor and not a bargain-counter--while some fat old boy with mutton-chops and a protuberant abdominal profile is raising the dickens because the poor tailor can't take the strain off the trouser-band and put it on the top buttons of the vest. Then you will learn that the shaping of collars and shoulders is a matter of supreme masculine concern, and that the hang of a trouser-leg is a thing on which the happiness of years may depend. Then possibly you will come to the conclusion that the average man thinks a great deal more about his attire than you have ever suspected.

Not that the average man's clothes are numerous or conspicuous--not at present prices, anyway. On the contrary, they are usually quite few and inconspicuous--except possibly from age. But the fewer they are the more attention he has to devote to them. That is the paradox of the thing.

A wealthy Adonis--or one with a good line of credit, at least--can adopt a careless attitude towards his clothes. He may even keep a valet to worry about them. When he orders a new suit he orders two or three. His shirts and ties and socks he buys by the dozen. Suits he doesn't like, he doesn't have to wear. If he grows weary of a certain color or pattern--one of those shepherd-plaids you can play chess on, for instance, or a nice hot brown that would melt the film of a camera--he tosses it to his man or an itinerant Hebrew and turns to one of a dozen other outfits in the wardrobe. Why should he worry? He doesn't.

The man, however, who gets a couple of suits a year--or more probably only one--has a quite different problem to face, calling for the finest qualities of artistic and economic judgment. With what anxiety he studies the various samples of cloth! Will this wear well? Will that one gloss? Will the grey go with his brown overcoat?--perhaps not, but then the green is so striking that people will notice it next year and remember.

Then as to the cut. It must be in the style, but not too pronounced. Those lapels are too wide, or the slit in the back isn't long enough, or the cuff on the trousers isn't sufficiently deep. One has to be careful, for--dash it all!--the suit has to do two years. So he worries the life out of his tailor for an hour a day through a fortnight or more, brings the coat back three times for alterations, and then pays for the suit in small instalments.

If a man's troubles were over once he got his suit, it wouldn't be so bad. But the older a suit gets the more trouble it gives. For one thing, you have to keep it pressed. Coats will get wrinkled, and human knees are obviously intended by nature to put bags in trousers. Occasionally, too, while playing approach shots with the soup or making short putts in the pudding sauce, a gentleman is liable to foozle and get it all over his vest--unless, of course, he makes a habit of tying his napkin around his neck. Incidentally, this is a much more sensible system than draping it over his right knee. Who ever spilled anything on his right knee, anyway?

These are serious questions to resolve. What should one do about it?--have a fellow in livery and a Ford call around once a week and carry one's garments off and bathe them in benzine and manhandle them with electric-irons? This is handy, of course, but in a few months it costs more than the suit is worth. Tip the cook, then, to press your trousers, and trust to heaven and a patent-hanger to keep the coat in shape? Sometimes this works, but naturally a lot depends on the cook.

Once we entrusted the trousers of our "other" suit to the cook, a colored lady of unblemished character and cheerful disposition. We were going out informally that evening, but we wanted to make a good showing, and we needed those trousers pressed in a hurry. She pressed them all right. She pressed them so hard she almost split the cloth on the edges. But when we saw them--modestly stretching a bare arm for them around the corner of the door--we smiled bravely, thanked her for her exceeding goodness, and then closed the door and wept feebly upon them. She had put the creases in the sides! Since then we make a point of keeping our "other" trousers under the mattress that they may be ready in cases of sudden emergency.

Another difficulty is in the matter of the buttons to be sewn on and the occasional rents to be mended. These are more slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which noble bachelor minds are called upon to suffer. Landladies are sometimes kind-hearted and can be flattered into displaying other domestic virtues than those connected with the making of beds and the frying of matutinal bacon. But usually they are too busy. Of course, a man can always get married, but ... and you don't always get your buttons sewn on, at that.

Personally, after much worry and embarrassment, we have acquired a very decent skill with the needle--nothing fancy, you know, but substantial. We can't use a thimble yet with any confidence, but there is usually a bed-post handy to shove the needle against. Not even during the patriotic activities of the war did we have any occasion to sew in hotel-lobbies or at concerts or in street-cars. What sewing we do is done in the privacy of the boudoir, and only when vitally necessary.

We have a friend, rather a dandy, who says that the ideal of good dressing--no, not the kind that comes with a turkey, girls--is that a man's personality should show through his clothes. This, of course, is very aesthetic and quite as it should be. But the thing must not be overdone. Occasionally a man's personality shows through too clearly, and then the only thing to do is to take a large needle, double the thread, and sew the place up.

Some day we hope to have a million--honestly acquired, we trust, but still a million. When that happy time arrives, we will dress as we darn well please. We will wear old clothes and let our pants bag at the knees. We will cease to pinch our feet in tight boots, or half-strangle ourself with high stiff collars. And people will not despise us for our shabby exterior. On the contrary, they will admire us for it, and think we are a democratic old cuss, and forgive us for owning so much money.

Till that period of affluence arrives, however, we will be forced to go on devoting too much time and attention and money to our habiliments. Not that we are a "knut," Friend Reader--the mere thought fills us with horror. On the contrary, our whole endeavor is to avoid the garish and extreme. We aim at elegant discretion. It is our ideal to give the impression that we are a wealthy amateur who has taken up journalism as a hobby.

A time there was, however, when we cherished other notions of journalistic attire. It was when we had first left our _alma mater_--one's _alma mater_ may be anything from a night-school to five years at Oxford--and had entered on the high mission of moulding public opinion at "twelve per." Then it was our ambition to be Bohemian. We wore very wide-brimmed hats, and low collars with generous openings in front so as to display the Adam's-apple in all its unfettered freedom. We never brushed our clothes, and we kept our hair rather long. We wanted to look like an eager young genius, whose gaze was on far and high things, and who spurned such petty distinctions as are conferred by creases in the front of one's pants.

One night our theory of sumptuary beauty received an awful jolt. The discovery was forced upon us that other people did not see eye to eye with us in the matter of the aesthetics of dress. There was one suit we owned--one of the two, that is--which we hated with a whole-hearted hatred. It was too much even for us. We bought it from a friend who had just gone into the tailoring profession. It was probably his first case, and the operation was not a success--he was nervous, perhaps. The cloth was a heather-mixture--that is what he called it, at any rate, though the color suggested that a number of chameleons had committed suicide on it. The cut was indescribable. The coat was dimly reminiscent of a Roman toga--we had told him to make it loose--and the trousers were obviously modelled on those of Micawber in old illustrated editions of "David Copperfield."

Being unable to afford the relief of throwing the thing away, we tried to get a certain amount of wear out of it under an overcoat. One evening when we were surreptitiously taking it for a walk under a mackintosh, we met an artist friend of ours. He was all muffled up to the throat, as though he, too, were concealing a sartorial mishap.

"Come on over to the Art Gallery," said he, "there are some rather nice things over there--imported."

We like pictures, especially those foreign ones--"Lady with Green Stocking," you know the sort--so we hastened gladly along with our friend, only stopping twice on the way. It was before the advent of Prohibition, and--well, if we had known what we were going to run into at the Art Gallery, we would have had about a quart, neat.

When we reached the place and our friend struggled out of his overcoat, we saw that he was in evening clothes. We were surprised, but thinking he was perhaps saving his business suit--besides, you never can tell how an artist will dress--we said nothing. But when we got into the gallery we understood. It was opening night, private view, by invitation only--the complete formal caper, b' Jove!--and every blessed soul in the place was in full regalia. Every woman present seemed to be "posing for the bust"--that, we believe is the technical phrase--and the gentlemen could be distinguished from waiters only by the wrinkles in their clothes and the faint aroma of camphor and moth-balls.

We would have cut and run if we had been given the chance; but our friend was a hospitable chap. He grabbed us by the arm and dragged us about from picture to picture, while we perspired agony at every pore and everybody in the gallery glared at us as though we were the tattooed man clad only in our illustrations. Art-lovers are supposed to be an unconventional set. If you want to find out how unconventional they are, go to an "opening night" in business clothes, and see!

Finally we made our escape--we pleaded illness or a twisted ankle or something of that sort. We hurried home and as soon as we got there we pitched that suit out of the window. It caught in the branches of a tree where it stayed till the family made us get a ladder and take it down--they said it gave the public the idea that the gentlemen in the house ran around without any clothes on.

We never did wear it again. The very next day we went out and bought a set of open-faced formal clothes. For months afterwards we wouldn't go out for a walk in the evening without them. We didn't feel safe. Mere clothes might be all right for millionaires and geniuses, but sumptuous raiment for ours! We couldn't afford to wear less.

*That Fur Coat*

Ever since our downy and callow youth the fur-lined overcoat has been for us a symbol of wealth and a certain dashing deviltry. Of course, we are perfectly well aware that a number of tame married men, holding positions worth about twenty dollars a week, own fur-lined coats. Even on the editorial staff of which we are the bright particular star there are two or three overcoats lined with something definitely recognizable as fur.

Nevertheless we have never been able to conquer our instinctive feeling that a fur-lined overcoat indicates the possession of a great deal of money and a doggish tendency to spend it on wine, women, and--well, the singing is not so important in the picture. Whenever we see a man sporting a fur-lined overcoat our first thought is to wonder whether or not his wife has found out about him. Our second is to wish we had a coat like it.

The origin of this curious and somewhat pathetic feeling about fur-lined coats is probably to be found in the days of our adolescence, when we wore deliriously exotic ties and attended the presentations of refined melodrama. We devoted much thought in those days to the subject of masculine attire--possibly with some obscure notion of attracting the weaker sex by the brilliancy of our plumage--and the villain always fascinated while he revolted us. We had much joy of his clothes.

To see the handsome devil swing across the stage with his light but fiendish ha-ha, his cigarette, and the dress-suit which is the national costume of villains, always gave us a thrill which the chaste embraces of the hero and heroine seldom provided. Even to this day we wouldn't give a darn to watch some other fellow hugging a comely young woman.

Usually the villain wore a fur-lined coat at some stage of his hellish machinations--preferably at the height of them, when he was about to boil the heroine's baby, for instance, or was engaged in tying that long-suffering and virtuous lady in the path of the onrushing train. It was at such moments that he threw open the coat loaned by the well-known firm of local furriers--as the programme never forgot to state--and displayed the mink lining of luxurious sin. We always wondered how the heroine found the strength of mind to resist his wicked advances to her.

Incidentally, we noticed that no matter what liberties the hero might take with the person of the villain--the hero was usually a muscular blond--he always forebore to lay the hands of avenging justice on the fur-lined coat. He might pitch the tr-r-raitor-r off a cliff, or slowly choke him to death after a furious grapple, or shoot him in the nick of time and the chest, but never with the coat on. If the villain forgot to take it off, the hero always taunted him into doing so. Whereupon the villain, knowing full well that he had come to the end of his evil tether, either hung the coat carefully on a handy hook or folded it neatly on a chair. The owner might be down in the orchestra seats.

Such scenes bred in us a superstitious reverence for fur-lined garments. It became the dream of our young life to possess such an overcoat, a gold cigarette-case, and three or four wives whom we had married for their money. But you know how disappointing these dreams are apt to be. We didn't even get the wives.

The nearest we ever came to a fur-lined coat was owning one with a Persian-lamb collar. We never cared much for that coat. There was an air of superficiality about it. Not that we have anything against Persian-lamb collars so far as they go. But they don't go very far. Besides, they make one look like a police-lieutenant or a chauffeur.

Mind you, it was a swagger garment in its way. In addition to the fur collar it had a double-breasted front, and was fastened with barrel-shaped arrangements instead of buttons. It had everything pertaining to a fur-lined coat, except the fur-lining.

Of course, you wouldn't notice that vital defect unless we opened the coat or took it off. And we never did either in public. We have sat in street-cars up near the stove with that coat buttoned up to our chin, until people have moved away from us under the impression that we had the measles. We have almost had to thrash butlers to prevent them helping us off with it--if there is anything obstinate on earth, it is a butler with the idea that you are hiding something from him. We have even retired into dark doorways to get a cent out of our pants-pocket to buy a paper, rather than open the coat on a busy corner.

In spite of these precautions, we always had the feeling that people knew about that coat and discussed it. They had a way of looking at it as though they thought the collar had been put on with safety-pins. We grew to hate the coat. Finally the moths got it. That is, they bored holes in it--probably looking for the lining.

Still our thwarted ambition to possess a real fur-lined coat has persisted. We want it as badly as we ever did. It is nothing to us that they have gone out of exclusive style. We care not that every second man on the street has a coat with some sort of hairy stuff on the collar and the interior draped with the mortal remains of the commoner sort of muskrat. We are still faithful to our early love.

From time to time we have gone into one or other of the various local emporiums--or should it be "emporia?"--of skins, peltry, fleece, hides, and fur, and have priced the garment of our longing. We have looked at mink-lined ones, rat-lined, rabbit-lined, and even seal-lined. We have tried them on and talked sagely to salesmen about them. But we have bought not, neither have we paid down in instalments. We have sighed, jingled the quarter against the small change in our pocket, and said we would call again soon.

The trouble is that the only coats we like are those ranging from about four hundred up--up as far as you can see, and then some! The seal ones we definitely gave up. No one but a former manufacturer of munitions or an inventor of booze-substitutes should aspire to those. It isn't only the initial expense but the way you have to live up to them--taxicabs, diamonds, and half a dollar to the hat-boy every time he helps you on with it.

That left mink, and mink we resolved it should be, in spite of its scarcity. You see, the mink is a small animal of retiring nature and celibate instincts. At least, the mink does not seem to run to large families. The rabbit takes up fatherhood as a profession--but nothing like that for the mink! One or two little minks, and that's all. The mink is a sort of natural Eugenist. "Better babies" is his slogan, not "More babies." As a result minks are hard to get, and correspondingly expensive.

Frequently have we cast eyes of longing on mink-lined coats in fur-store windows, as we strolled along to the office on cold mornings in our combination raincoat and winter ulster. They have been handsome coats, too, many of them, but there has always been something about them we didn't like--sometimes the collar, occasionally the shell (how those military terms will creep in even yet!), and nearly always the small tag hanging from the upper righthand button-hole and proclaiming the price.

But one fine day during that very cold snap we finally saw the fur-coat of our youthful vision. There it hung, or rather stood, in the window, spreading its mink lining to the ravished gaze and ruffling its otter collar in tantalizing beauty. That collar had been peeled off the emperor of all the otters--or the crown prince, at the very least--and Heaven alone knows how many minks had delivered up their fluffy integument to furnish forth that sumptuous lining.

It was a beautiful thing, God wot, and the price was right--only two hundred and fifty iron men, simoleons, bucks, bones, or spondulicks. Not that we take a light view of a sum which in the old days would have bought two thousand cocktails, and if judiciously expended on "lush" would have enabled one to laugh at Prohibition for many happy weeks. But what is two hundred and fifty dollars for a fur-coat which was originally five hundred as the tag explicitly declared, and had come down through successive stages to this absurdly inadequate figure?

We rushed right in and made a clerk drag it out of the window. He did it a little doubtfully, it seemed--evidently unaware how many moneyed men dress very plainly, not to say shabbily. But our enthusiasm finally impressed him. He held it up for us, and we slipped with a sigh of tremulous delight into its soothing embrace. Lordy, how that coat fitted! How gently it caressed us, and how gracefully it hung upon the angles of our frame! There is something positively sinful in such comfort as that.

Of course, it wouldn't do to let the clerk see how delighted we were with it--he might raise the price again. So we controlled our voice as best we could, and asked him if the skins were all right. We even tried to look disparaging.

"All right?" he almost shouted. "Why, if it wasn't for the stringency and all that, this coat would be selling at three times--but you can see for yourself. Just look at those skins--everyone of them taken in the middle of winter!" And in his indignation at our attitude, he grabbed a couple of minks and crumpled them up as if he were going to tear them out of the coat and throw them away.

That's a peculiar thing about fine furs. The finer they are, the more the connoisseur seems to abuse them. Poor skins have to be handled with great care, we presume, but when your real expert gets hold of a good piece of fur, he shakes it and beats it and tries to pull the hair out of it.

It was also very nice to know that the minks had been taken in the winter when they had all their fur on. In the summer, when the minks are wearing nothing but their swimming-trunks, so to speak--but the thing doesn't bear thinking of.

It was just the coat we had always wanted--the clerk said we looked great in it--but after a hasty recollection of our bank-balance as it appeared when we last put a dint in it, we told him we would call again. And we kept calling. We called about a dozen times. We simply couldn't keep away from that fur-coat. And every time we went we brought a friend or two with us to look it over and give us advice. We put the coat on and walked around the store in it to show how it hung, and then we took it off and adjourned to the nearest cigar-stand or blind-pig to discuss the matter. The coat cost us about twenty dollars in a couple of weeks.

Our friends all admired the coat, but curiously enough, they all advised against us buying it--perhaps from a conscientious objection to seeing so much money tied up in mere fur. They always warned us that if we once wore it, we'd have to go on wearing it all the time for fear of catching cold. They said that's the worst of fur-coats--one doesn't dare leave them off. But naturally, if we got that coat, we intended to go on wearing it till about the middle of June. When it got too hot to wear it open, we'd carry it on our arm with the lining turned out.

Lately the clerk had been getting quite sniffy. The last time we were in, he intimated that the coat was beginning to look rather used from being worn around the store so much. We finally had to discontinue these visits, but we hated to tear ourself away from that glorious garment. The first thing we knew some butcher might buy it.

But perhaps some rich relative of ours, turning up rather unexpectedly--we don't insist on any close consanguinity so long as he is rich--may see this pathetic screed and feel that here is a chance to help genius in distress. What's the use of erecting monuments to us after we are dead? How much better and kinder it would be to buy that coat and send it down to the office while we are still comparatively alive. In fact, this is our idea in writing this article.

*Spring in the City*

A thick, creamy, white lather covering that part of our countenance which indicates strength of character, showed that we were about to shave. It is our matutinal custom. Poised in our hand was the lethal weapon with which we perform this painful rite.

At that moment we heard the robin! At that very instant of the morning of Saturday, April the sixth, the voice of the robin was heard in the block. Immediately we threw up the window, and careless of the rather intimate nature of our habiliments, we leaned out over the ledge.

There was no robin in sight. No glimpse of red-breast gladdened our heart. We looked in vain at each of the miniature plots of mud which residents on our street refer to as the "lawn." Nowhere could we see Cock Robin sturdily dragging a large, thick worm from his lair, or waiting with dignified alertness for breakfast to poke up its head. But his voice filled the street, clear and high and vibrant with delight--the very voice of triumphant spring!

"Some class to that whistlin'," said someone below us.

We looked down and saw a dingy man with a bag of tools on his shoulder, who was frankly watching us and grinning with disgusting familiarity. Plumbers never are in a hurry.

"Makes a fella feel like chuckin' his work, don't it?" he persisted.

"It does," we burbled through the lather, and drew in our head with reckless haste. We afterwards discovered some of our back-hair still clinging to the lower edge of the window-frame. But not even the painful presence of a protuberance on our skull where none had been before could banish our joy in that robin's song.

Spring was here at last! It is true there was still much ice in our backyard, and in our neighbor's backyard, and in the backyard beyond his. It is true also that icicles hung from the roofs, and that the water in our bath-tub was still of a temperature to produce curiously mottled effects on our general complexion. But we were happy and we sang as we splashed about, for we knew that spring was here.

Therefore did we kick into a corner with joyous abandon the thick, fuzzy garments--warranted pure wool and unshrinkable (base deception!)--with which we had armed ourself as with triple brass against the onslaught of old Boreas. And from a camphored recess in our trunk we drew forth tenuous and elastic vesture which clung to our manly form and restored to it its summer slimness.

When the coal-man's bill arrived in the morning mail, we threw it carelessly aside for our landlady. Our attitude towards coal-men had suddenly changed from anxious propitiation to bored indifference. The strike news in the papers moved not our Olympian serenity. We sympathized with the miners. We felt that if we were a miner ourself, we would strike at once and stay struck till the dog-days caused us to long for subterranean coolness.

Then draping our light overcoat in a jaunty way over our arm, we walked down town. It wasn't a case of going out with the avowed intention of walking, and then sprinting after the first street-car we saw. No, we really walked, inhaling large breaths of vernal ozone. And a lot of other men were similarly engaged. Fellows that we used to see morning after morning furtively slipping into a street-car--the same car that we slipped into ourself--now swung along with their chests swelling out of their coats and a good-to-be-alive expression on their faces. We also noticed that they seemed to take more than the normal masculine interest in the spring dresses which flitted by--especially those affectionate gowns which cling so alluringly to their fair owners. Verily it was the spring.

In a bit of ground where the mud had been pounded to the shiny consistency of overdone chocolate blanc-mange, three very dirty and very serious-minded urchins played marbles. Further on a spoiled darling of fortune who possessed a top spun it with studied indifference--and with a cord, too, of course--while a couple of other youngsters less favored of the gods looked enviously on.

A garden patch littered with sticks and wet leaves and the water-logged aftermath of winter held a resolute little old man with an immense rake, who was endeavoring to introduce some order into his chaotic cosmos. He was having a very busy time, something like a pup who had got into a boneyard. He scratched and tugged and grunted, and here and there he managed to get the stuff gathered into piles. He may have had some notion of burning it, but it would take many sunny days before the stuff would be dry enough to burn anywhere but in a very hot and active volcano.

We leaned on the fence and sniffed the moist rich odors of the dead leaves. They brought to mind pleasant pictures of the approaching time of planting, when enthusiastic amateurs, heedless of the mud on the knees of their trousers, would be jabbing holes in every available bit of ground and sticking seeds and bulbs into them. And we reflected sadly on the sardonic humor of fate which had made us a book-reviewer instead of a happy farmer lad carolling to the sun as we went about the simple and healthful duties of our husbandry. We thought of striding out to the fields with the sun turning the frosted grass to silver filigree, and then we noticed that the old gentleman was contemplating us with the cold and wary eye of a disillusioned sparrow.

"Are you looking for work, young man?" he asked, "or are you merely looking at it? Because, if you really want a job, there is one right here that I would like...."

But we were already on our way. We suddenly recalled that the mail must be piled up on our desk, and that our presence was urgently needed at the office. Did we want work? And so in an instant we were brought back from the golden meadows of dreamland, where we saw ourself wandering a flushed young god in the morning of the world, and became once more a middle-aged office-man, somewhat stooped from bending over a desk.

The spring was in our blood, however, and our spirits revived at the first park we came to. On such mornings one makes a point of walking through the parks, and Allen Gardens lay right on our line of march. They were a scene of joyous activity. Chief gardeners and assistant and deputy-assistant gardeners ran about in amiable confusion. There was a tremendous raking up of straw and mulch--mulch being the technical name for everything that is thrown on a flower-bed, from bricks to sardine-tins.

Around the fountain a lot of blithesome little toddlers pulled one another's hair, or made frantic efforts to drown themselves, while the nurse-girls exchanged confidences as to the precise tone in which "he said" and the elegant vivacity with which "I said to him."

The benches were out and they were occupied. Perhaps it is enough to say that the benches were out. They are never left unoccupied on a nice day of spring. Gentlemen of shabby leisure abhor a vacant seat. One is led to wonder where the men who sit in parks go during the winter--into cracks in the wall, possibly, like the flies. But the day was warm and the bench-boarders were out. There they sat blinking their eyes in drowsy contentment and sniffing hopefully the breezes of spring.

We paused to make some of the kindly and philosophic reflections which are dictated to us on such occasions by our whimsical genius. We looked about us with just such a keen and humorous expression as we felt Montaigne would have worn under similar circumstances. We were preparing to say something rather clever to ourself about the life of man, which is as a spring day, etc.

"Well, the long winter is over at last," said a voice at our elbow, or rather at our left shoulder-blade. It was a melancholy voice, a voice which intimated that the owner doubted he would ever see another spring. But a large face of more than usual redness caused one to question the likelihood of a demise so immediate.

"Yes," we admitted, "it seems to be over, and it is about time."

"Ah, the spring is a great season for them as is young and strong and handsome."

The wistful expression with which this battered, red-faced, watery-eyed person regarded us indicated that he thought we were all these things. We blushed slightly, and to hide our embarrassment--we are not used to such compliments, implied or otherwise--said in a voice of great heartiness:

"Ho, yes--nothing like the spring! Makes a fellow glad to be alive."

"Yes, yes," he agreed still more wistfully, "it makes a handsome young gentleman's heart expand--it makes him free-handed and generous." A sudden cold suspicion seized our vernal ardor and strangled it. Could it be possible that ... yes, it could! And that rubicund old scoundrel proceeded to inform us that the "temporary loan--(the printer will please emphasize temporary")--of half a dollar would cause him to recall our memory with gratitude at frequent intervals for the rest of his life.

If we had had half a dollar in our pocket, we might ... but what man who is paid on Saturdays ever had any money to bring down to the office Saturday morning? We hinted discreetly at our destitution, but the red-faced man merely grunted and turned away. We fear he did not believe us.

We regretted his distrust, of course, but, as Emerson might have said, it is great to be misunderstood in the spring. In a few minutes we forgot our embarrassment and remembered the ruddy one merely as a humorous episode of the jovial day. We chuckled all the way down to the office as we thought of the open and unabashed admiration with which he had regarded us, till he discovered that we were a good Samaritan without the price.

At the office everybody was glad to see us. Even the Managing Editor was amiable. He said nothing about the hour we got in--he seemed to think it was very nice of us to come down at all. And then he sat on the corner of our desk and talked about the beauty of living in the country, and waking up in the morning with the calves bleating around you and the hens and all that, and walking out in the fields to see the fine, healthy farmer lads turning up the sod and reaping and harrowing and everything.

Of course, it was immediately obvious to us that the Managing Editor's idea of country life had been gained from the reading of sentimental verse. Unfortunately, we find it difficult to share this enthusiasm for rural life. You see, we worked on a few farms when we were a wild lad just out of college--we were seeking inspiration in the soil. So we know just how a farm looks and smells in the spring when they are enriching the ground. But we didn't disillusion the M.E.--we wanted everyone to be happy.

* * * * *

It is true that winter rose again Sunday morning. It is true that Monday was cold and blustery, that there was a thick covering of snow on the ground Tuesday morning, that we had to get out our woollens once more, that in the interval we caught a cold in the head. We knew it, but we heeded not. Our eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the spring.

*Moving Day*

It all depends on how much or how little you have to move--the much or little referring to the amount of impediment with which your habitat is furnished. At either end of the scale moving is a matter involving slight personal inconvenience. But midway toil and trouble lie.

If you live and move and have your meals in what reporters are fond of describing as a "palatial residence," and if it occurs to you to remove yourself and all that is yours to a still more palatial mansion, you have only to give orders. The work and worry you leave to the 'elp, while you and the family spend the interval gaily at Palm Beach or Monte Carlo. When you come back everything is in readiness. You can walk right in, chuck your grip to your valet, and jump into the new porcelain bath-tub. When you emerge, the bath-towel is waiting for you on the gold-plated rack to which you have always been accustomed.

And if, gentle reader, instead of a valet you should have a maid--even among the most modern women maids are still usual--it makes no difference in the general readiness of the new home. You trip joyously into your boudoir, she unhooks your gown, and you--but, of course, at this point visitors are always asked to wait in the library. But these details are irrelevant. The main thing is that all the work has been done for you. All the worry has been borne by someone else. It only remains for you to accustom yourself to your new surroundings.

In the same way at the other end of the social scale, moving is equally a matter calling for little thought and less trouble. The mover puts his tooth-brush and his comb in his vest-pocket; he throws his other pair of trousers into his bag along with his other shirt and the pair of shoes he had half-soled; and then he slips quietly away while his landlady is not looking. It is not that he is running away exactly, but that he is sensitive and shy, and dreads the emotional strain of bidding farewell. Parting is such sweet sorrow that she might not let him go without keeping his grip as a souvenir--just to remind her of that "ten" he promised to give her at the end of the week.

Gentlemen who make these periodical migrations do not worry much about it. Even if they did pay their bills, they would still grow tired of staying in the same place. So they pack up and move, suddenly and with light-hearted unconcern. They don't call it "moving." They refer to it as "making a getaway."

It is not our intention, however, to treat of either the wealthy or the "stony broke" in this serious consideration of the crises in the affairs of house-holders known as "moving-days." The wealthy don't move often enough, the "busted" move too often, and both move too easily to make the operation an important factor in their lives. But the fellow on a one-cylinder salary who uses a fifty-dollar-a-month house for purposes of domicile--he is the man to whom moving is all that General Sherman declared war to be. It is a revolution, a cataclysm. He dates important events as occurring in "the year we moved" from this house to that other. Moving-days mark off periods of existence the way the Olympian games served for the ancient Greeks.

Why then do people do it? Sometimes because they can't help it. Landlords have a way of handing over their property to syndicates to build apartment-houses on the site. At other times landlords, whose actions no man can foretell, decide to raise the rent. Or they may object to the playful ways of the tenant's children--perhaps the little dears have dug a cave or two in the wall of the living-room, or have in childish glee filled the plumbing with half-bricks and gunny-sacks.

Then there are landlords who have acquired the please-remit habit to such an extent that a trifling delay of a couple of months with the rent leads to intense unpleasantness. They won't even take it in kind--except Scotch, perhaps. And that, of course, is too good for landlords. In fact, there are a thousand and one things which may cause friction between the man who lives in the house and the man who merely owns it. As the landlord generally refuses to leave, the tenant has to.

This explains a good many movings, but not all, nor even the greater number of them. Most people, as a matter of fact, move for the simple reason that hope springs eternal, and man never is but always to be. Every house has its faults and drawbacks. Even the palaces which cost eighty-five dollars a month serve to remind their occupants that there are beauties and comforts which even their comparative affluence cannot command. And naturally the lower one drops in the financial scale the truer this truism--the truth of truisms is our chief objection to them.

Man wants but little here below--just a nice, twelve-room house, hot-water heating, lawn all around, commodious shed where he can stow the lawn-mower and the spade during the period of hibernation, enamel bath, electric lighting, and such other necessities of the simple life as improved by Edison. But he wants that little a long time before he gets it--for fifty dollars a month. Therefore he moves.

Probably the house he already lives in has a hot-air furnace that goes into a state of coma on cold nights, the kind of plumbing that has to be operated on every few days by a surgeon in over-alls, and a roof that permits every thunderstorm to come right down and jump into bed with him. Probably the girl next door plays "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" till midnight every night of the week, except Sunday when she plays hymn-tunes. But he has hopes. He feels that the next house is going to possess all the beauty and comfort of Aladdin's fairy palace, and that the landlord will be one of those dear old boys with white whiskers, who will answer every complaint with, "Just have the work done and send the bill to me." There is no such landlord, but the tenant keeps on looking for him. He moves. And lo, in another little while he moves again. He keeps right on moving, poor chap, till that final move when they put plumes on the moving-van.

Your old experienced mover starts in early. He makes a real occasion of it. After he and his wife and the baby-carriage have strolled around town for about six weeks, they finally select a prospective residence. It is just about the same as the old house--they are lucky, in fact, if it isn't worse. But they see the new one through pink spectacles. Everything looks like a sunset-scene in a musical comedy.

"Oh, how happy we're all going to be!"

Exit dancingly. Then they go home and start packing up.

The first thing you always do when you pack is to take up the carpets and oil-cloths. You don't bother picking up the tacks. They are picked up in instalments by members of the family in the early morning and late at night. No electro-magnet ever had half the allurement for a tack that a bare foot exerts. A defenceless big toe will draw them right across a room.

The next move is to drag all the trunks and packing-cases out of their lairs in the attic or cellar and place them in the upper and lower halls in the most unexpected places. Then one is always sure to find them in the dark. Uncle especially, coming home rather late from the lodge meeting--but this is a tragic theme. We have been in uncle's place.

Pictures are then taken off the walls and laid in readily accessible places on the floor. In this way one can put one's foot through a lovely seascape, or tread upon the features of defunct relatives in enlarged photographs, with the minimum of exertion. Personally, we prefer walking into mirrors--the pieces look so much prettier.

Gradually the house assumes the appearance of a place in the devastated area of Flanders. Furniture is piled up in barricades everywhere. Bales of linen and curtains and that sort of thing are built up into parapets. All they need is a firing-step and a periscope or two to look like the real thing. Behind these obstructions the family cowers as it eats its meals--if the food may be so described--and seeks shelter from the prying eye when it goes to bed. You see, the windows are all bare and one can't be too careful of the observer in the sniping-post across the way. Probably the best course is to sit on the side of one's bed and undress in the dark. Not only would this plan of action be more likely to commend itself to the Moral Reform League, but it has the further advantage of avoiding the tacks. One is not so apt to give an impromptu imitation of a man who has inadvertently stepped on a porcupine.

At last the great day arrives! You are awakened by a large hairy man, who wants to know when you are going to get out of your bed so he can take it apart and load it into the van. Hurriedly you jump into the oldest and most primitive clothing permitted by the rules of society and the state of the weather. And you get busy--Homerically busy!

It is true that you have hired a couple of men and a huge waggon. But these gentlemen are professionals. They direct the operation. They are the headquarters' staff, so to speak. Occasionally they take a hand in the game and then you wish they hadn't. You beg them to be careful with the piano--rented--and promptly they carry off half the front porch on the end of it. The enormous walnut whatnot, which has been "an old family possession" ever since you bought it second-hand, is made to look like part of the steerage furniture of the Ark.

Some artistic friends of ours had a fine cast of the Venus of Milo. It was the only thing in the house to be proud of, and they were. They loved it so much that they had never even pawned it, no matter how bitter the temporary stringency. Then one sad moving-day, a horny-handed cyclops with fusel oil instead of brains picked it up and dropped it. If Venus had disputed the right-of-way with an armored car she couldn't have been reduced to more or smaller pieces.

"Oh, how could you--how could you be so stupid?" sobbed the lady of the house.

"Ah, it ain't worth makin' all that fuss about," growled the son of Anak, "sure the darn old thing was bust anyhow."

Finally all the household effects are piled out on the sidewalk, while the neighbors sit on their stoops and make remarks about the quantity and quality of your equipment. Of course, no furniture would look good under such circumstances. If the fittings of Buckingham Palace were piled up on the front lawn, they would hardly be impressive. And you are keenly conscious that your furniture has nothing on King George's. The only thing to do is to pretend that you don't see your neighbors while your sofas and chairs stand on their heads on the sidewalk, kicking their ancient legs in the air, and showing with painful frankness the places where they have been mended.

In the meantime, you keep travelling between the old house and the new one. As the pile keeps diminishing in front of your home that has been, it keeps growing in front of your home to be. There, too, the neighbors are on the watch, and as your old mattresses are carried in, bleeding excelsior from a dozen wounds, you can see their anticipations of your desirability as an addition to the society of the block going steadily down to below the freezing point.

At last the work is done. Everything you can think of has been piled up higgledy-piggledy at the new place. The family sits forlornly in the midst of it--camping out in a strange house!

"Where's the baby?" shrieks mother suddenly in the midst of the weary silence.

Then you remember that you left the little innocent in the bath-tub in the old house for safe keeping. As you tear madly off to retrieve him, you keep wondering if he has turned on the water and drowned himself.

And yet, the following spring, your fancy lightly turns to thoughts of still another move.

*Vacation Vagaries*

Vacation is an excellent institution. Anything that makes a man so contented with his job and his ordinary lot in life as it does must be a good thing. After two weeks spent at the average summer resort the food at home or in the old boarding-house in the city seems rich and varied, and the work at the office proves an intellectual recreation.

The best thing about vacation is making plans for it. This is a truism, did you say? Of course, it is a truism. Occasionally we indulge in truisms, though our natural preference is for "isms" that are not true.

When we say "making plans," we mean plans only in the most general and romantic sense. Once you come down to details all the poetry is squeezed out of the thing. The business of writing to hotelkeepers and railway passenger-agents and other rich but dishonest people for information is a bore and a burden. So also is packing up.