A quaint little duodecimo is the "Jaarbockie voor de Stad Delft," with little headpieces pictorially representing the seasons and a curiously wood-cut astrologer introducing "den Almanak." A rather square-toed kind of a little volume, neatly bound in grey boards, and very nicely printed, having altogether an effect of housewifely cleanliness, is the "Verslag van den Toestand der Gemeente Haarlem over het jaar 1894. Door Burgemeester en Wethouders Uitgebracht aan den Gemeenteraad; imprint Gedrukt bij Gebr Nobels, te Haarlem."

The language of Great Britain's municipal documents is lofty: "The Royal Burrough of Kensington, Minute of His Worship the Mayor (Sir H. Seymour King, K.C.I.E., M.P.) for the year ending November, 1901." (Here is imprinted the design of a quartered shield containing a crown, a Papal hat, and two crosses, and, beneath, the motto: "Quid Nobis Ardui.") "Printed" (continues the reading) "by order of the Council, 30th, October, 1901. Jas. Truscott and Son, Printer, Suffolk Lane, E.C." And in the following there is something of the rumble of the history of England:

"Addresses Presented from the Court of Common Council to the King.

On his Majesty's Accession to the Throne, And on various other Occasions, and his Answers, Resolutions of the Court, Granting the Freedom of the City to several Noble Personages; with their Answers, Instructions at different Times to the Representatives of the City in Parliament. Petitions to Parliament for different Purposes, Resolutions of the Court, On the Memorial of the Livery, to request the Lord Mayor to call a Common Hall; For returning Thanks to Lord Chatham, And his Answer; For erecting a Statue in Guildhall, to William Beckford, Esq.; late Lord Mayor, Agreed to between the 23d October, 1760, and the 13th. October, 1770 Printed by Henry Fenwick, Printer to the Honorable City of London."

Henry Fenwick, Esq., takes himself with dignity.

But to turn from the pomp of state, to peep for a moment at the intimate life of the people of England a couple of centuries ago, few things could be better than "The Constable's Accounts of the Manor of Manchester," from which a few items of "Disbursements" are cited;

"Pd. Expences apprehending two Felons.... -/1/- "Pd. Expences maintaining them two Nights in the Dungeon ...................... -/2/- "To Ann Duncan very ill to take her over into Ireland ............................. -/4/- "To Straw for the Dungeon ............... -/4/- "To Belman sundry public Cries .......... -/7/6 "To three pair of Stockings and dying for the Beedle .............................. -/9/- "To Wine drinking Royal healths the Prince's birthday at his full age ............ 3/16/6 "To a distressed Sailor to Leverpoole ... -/1/- "Pd. Boonfire on King's Coronation Day .. -/6/6 "Gave Nancy Mackeen a Stroller .......... -/-/6 "Pd. Musicians at rejoicing for good news from Germany, and on birth of the Prince of Wales ............................ 2/7/- "Pd. for a Cat with nine Tails .......... -/3/- "To a lame Stranger ..................... -/1/- "Pd. lighting Lamps last Dark ........... -/2/6 "Several Fortune Tellers Indicted, etc... -/12/- "Pd. Lawyer Nagave advising Roger Blomely's Case bringing Actions agt. the Constable for putting him in the Dungeon for being drunk on Sunday in time of divine Service .............................. l/l/-"

It is interesting to note in this connection that on August 16, 1762, was "Pd." one "Barnard Shaw maintenance of Rioters and Evidence, 1-11-6."

A circumstance of considerable human interest, too, and one possibly little known, is the great aversion to the sight of bears held by the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight, at least in the year 1891. A copy of the "Bye-Laws" of the "Administrative County of the Isle of Wight," issued that year, contains, following articles relating to "Regulating the Sale of Coal" and "Spitting," this:

"As to Bears.

"1. No bear shall be taken along or allowed to be upon any highway, unless such bear shall be securely confined in a vehicle closed so as to completely hide such bear from view.

"2. Any person who shall offend against this Bye-law shall be liable to a fine not exceeding in any case five pounds."

"Atti del Municipale! Atti del Consiglio Comunale di Siena. Bollettino Degli atti Pubblicati Dalla Giunta Municipale di Roma." It is fitting that quartos of such titles as these, containing addresses beginning Signori Consiglieri and Onorevoli Signori, should look something like Italian opera, and be bound in vellum, title and date stamped in gold on bright red and purple labels, with sides of mottled purple boards, and imprints such as "Bologna. Regia Tipografia Fratelli Merlani," and of typography the best. And on genuine paper, far from the woodpulp of American municipal graft contracts.

Once, indeed, municipal documents were august pages. Some of the early Italian and German are on paper that will last as long as the law. And in these times the title pages of municipal documents were Piranesiesque: massive architectural scroll work framing stone tablets, hung with garlands of fruit and grain, and decorated with carved lions, human heads, and histrionic masks. And initial letters throughout to correspond.

Now who but France would bind her municipal documents in heavily tooled, full levant morocco, with grained silk inside covers?



XVIII

AS TO PEOPLE

It is a very pleasant thing to go about in the world and see all the people.

Among the finest people in the world to talk with are scrubwomen. Bartenders, particularly those in very low places, are not without considerable merit in this respect. Policemen and trolley-car conductors have great social value. Rustic ferry-men are very attractive intellectually. But for a feast of reason and a flow of soul I know of no society at all comparable to that of scrubwomen.

It is possible that you do not cultivate scrubwomen. That is your misfortune. Let me tell you about my scrubwoman. I know only this one, I regret to say, but she, I take it, is representative.

Her name—ah, what does it matter, her name? The thing beyond price is her mind. There is stored, in opulence, all the ready-made language, the tag-ends of expression, coined by modern man. But she does not use this rich dross as others do. She touches nothing that she does not adorn. She turns the familiar into the unexpected, which is precisely what great writers do. To employ her own expression, she's "a hot sketch, all right."

She did not like the former occupant of my office. No; she told me that she "could not bear a hair of his head." It seems that some altercation occurred between them. And whatever it was she had to say, she declares that she "told it to him in black and white." This gentleman, it seems, was "the very Old Boy." Though my scrubwoman admits that she herself is "a sarcastic piece of goods." By way of emphasis she invariably adds to her assertions, "Believe me!"

Her son—she has a son—has much trouble with his feet. His mother says that if he has gone to one "shoeopodist" he has gone to a dozen. My scrubwoman tells me that she is "the only fair one" of her family. Her people, it appears, "are all olive." My scrubwoman is a widow. She has told me a number of times of the last days of her husband. It is a touching story. She realised that the end was near, and humoured him in his idea of returning before it was too late to "the old country." One day when he had asked her again if she had got the tickets, and then turned his face to the wall to cough, she said to herself, "Good-night—shirt."

But most of the discourse of my scrubwoman is cheerful. She is a valiant figure, a brave being very fond of the society of her friends (of whom I hold myself to be one), who works late at night, and talks continually. I know that if you would contrive to find favour with your scrubwoman you would often be like that person told of by mine who "laughed until she thought his heart would break."

The most brotherly car-conductors, naturally, are those with not over much business, those on lines in remote places. I remember the loss I suffered not long ago on a suburban car, which results, I am sorry to say, in your loss also.

The bell signalling to stop rang, and a vivaciously got-up woman with an extremely broad-at-the-base, pear-shaped torse, arose and got herself carefully off the car. The conductor went forward to assist her. When he returned aft he came inside the car and sat on the last seat with two of us who were his passengers. The restlessness was in him which betrays that a man will presently unbosom himself of something. This finally culminated in his remarking, as if simply for something to say to be friendly, "You noticed that lady that just got off back there? Well," he continued, leaning forward, having received a look intended to be not discouraging, "that's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress;—that lady's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress."

"Is that so!" exclaimed one who was his passenger, not wishing to deny him the pleasure he expected of having excited astonishment. A car conductor leads a hard life, poor fellow, and one should not begrudge him a little pleasure like that.

The conductor twisted away his face for an instant while he spat tobacco-juice. Thus cleared for action, he returned to the subject of his thoughts. "That's the mother of Cora Splitts," he repeated again. "She's at White Plains tonight, Cora is. Cora and me," he said, as one that says, "ah, me, what a world it is!"—"Cora and me was chums once. Yes, sir; we was chums and went to school together." Some valuable reminiscences of the distinguished woman, dating back to days before the world dreamed of what she would become, by one who played with her as a child, doubtless would have been told, but the conductor was interrupted; a great many people got off, some others got on the car just then, and he went forward to collect fares from these, and the thread was broken.

At my journey's end, I recollect, I went into a public-house. There was a person there whose presence made a deep impression upon my memory. A fine stocky lad, with a great square jaw, heavy beery jowls, and a blue-black, bearded chin; in a blue striped collar. He put both hands firmly on the bar-rail at a good distance apart; straightened his arms taut and his body at right angles with them, so that he resembled a huge carpenter's square; then curled his back finely in, and said, with a significant look at the man behind the bar, "Gimme one o' them shells." A thin glass of beer was set before him; he relaxed, straightened up, and drank off its contents. Then, apparently, feeling that he was observed, he looked very unconcernedly all about the room and appeared to be bored. He then examined very attentively a picture on the wall, and his neck seemed to be temporarily stiff. I can see him now, I am happy to say, as plain as print.

One's mind is, indeed, a grand photograph album. How precious to one it will be when one is old and may sit all day in a house by the sea and, so to say, turn the leaves. That is why one should be going about all the while in one's vigour with an alert and an open mind.

Wives are picturesque characters, too. I mind me of my friend Billy Henderson's new wife. Billy Henderson's wife looks like a balloon. She's so fat that she has busted down the arches of her feet. In order to "fight flesh" she walks a great deal. She walks a mile every day, and then takes a car back home. Her father comes over from Philadelphia once every week to see her, because she is so homesick. For months after she was married she just cried all the time, she was so homesick. She never goes to the movies. The movies make her cry. One time she saw at the movies a hospital scene. It horrified her for days. A friend of hers is about to be married. But she has told her friend that she cannot go to the wedding. Weddings always make her cry so. She just can't read the war news; it is too terrible; it affects her so that she can't sleep a bit. She hasn't read any of it at all, and, she says, she has no idea who is winning the war. She takes some kind of capsules to reduce flesh, which cost six dollars for fifty. She has taken twenty-five. The extension of the draft age being spoken of, she said to Billy:

"Dearie, I'll put you under the bed where they won't get you." She doesn't want to vote, and she can't understand why any one should want to go to poles and vote and all that kind of thing.

Billy Henderson's wife is handsome; she is rich; she is an excellent cook; she loves Billy Henderson.



XIX

HUMOURS OP THE BOOK SHOP

The panorama before his view is the human mind. He panders to its divers follies, consults its varied wisdom. He stands umbrellaless in the rain of all its idiosyncrasies. Why has he not lifted up his voice? He, the book clerk, that lives among countless volumes of confessions! Whose daily task is to wrestle hour by hour with a living Comedie Humaine! Has the constant spectacle of so many books been astringent in its effect upon any latent creative impulse? Or has he been dumb in the colloquial sense, forsooth; a figure like Mr. Whistler's guard in the British Museum? Sundry "lettered booksellers" of England have, indeed, given us some reminiscences of bookselling and its humours. But they were the old boys. They belonged to an old order and reflected another day. "As physicians are called 'The Faculty' and counsellors-at-law 'The Profession,'" writes Boswell, "the booksellers of London are called 'The Trade.'" Let us look into this Trade as it is to-day, we said. So for a space we played we were a book clerk.

There are two, decidedly contradictory, popular conceptions of the man whose business it is to sell books. One is the sentimental notion of an old gentleman in a "stovepipe hat," a dreamer and an idealist, who keeps a second-hand stall. The most delightful pictures of him are in the pages of Anatole France. He is a man of much erudition. And books are his wife and family, food and drink. Then there is the other idea. "Why is it," we report the remark of an important looking gentleman in a high hat, "that clerks in book stores never know anything about books?" (or anything else, was perhaps not far from his thought.) This gentleman, it was readily perceived, had an idea that he had said something rather good. But it was not new. This conception of the book clerk is one of the world's seven jokes—brother to that of the mother-in-law. The book clerk of this view is a familiar figure in the pages of humour, like the talkative barber or the comic Irishman of the vaudeville stage—a stock character. His illiteracy is classic; his ignorant sayings irresistable. He was sired by Charles Keene and damned by Punch. Phil May was his godfather; and every industrious humourist employs him periodically. These two ideas of the book business are perhaps reconciled by the popularly cherished sentiment that book sellers are not what they were. Newspapers from time to time print feature articles about the days "When Book Sellers Knew Books." If you ask a salesman in a modern book shop if he has "Praed," you of course expect him to reply, "I have, sir (or madam), but it doesn't seem to do any good."

Well, at the Zoo there is humour from the inside looking out, as well as from the outside looking in. The book clerk is in the position to remark certain human phenomena patent to him beyond the view of any other, most curious, perhaps, among them a pleasant hypocrisy. "Oh!" purls a sweet lady, pausing to glance for the space of a second at her surroundings, "I think books are just fine!" "I love to be in a book store," rattles a vivacious young woman. "Books have the greatest fascination for me," says another. A young lady waiting for friends looks out of the front door the entire time. Her friends express regret at having kept her waiting. "Oh!" she exclaims, "I have been so happy here"—glancing quickly around at the books—"I should just like to be left here a couple of years." There is a respectful pause by all for an instant, each bringing into her face an expression of adoration for the dear things of the mind. Then, chatting gaily, the party hastens away. We turn to hear, "Oh, wouldn't you love to live in a book shop!"

What is it that all men say in a book shop? The great say it, even, and the far from great. Each in his turn looks solemnly at his companion or at the salesman and says: "Of the making of books there is no end." Then each in his turn lights into a smile. He has said something pretty good.

"There are persons esteemed on their reputation," says the "Imitation of Christ," "who by showing themselves destroy the opinion one had of them." Though one might think it would be the other way, it is difficult, indeed, to sell a book to a friend of the author. "Oh, I know the man who wrote that," is the reply. "I wouldn't read a book of his." You see, a great writer must be dead. A common error of book buyers is to confuse the words edition and copy. "Let me have a clean edition of this," is frequently asked. Once a lady asked for something "bound in gingham." No one, it is our belief, ever sold a light book to a Japanese. They are the book clerk's dread. Terribly intelligent, somewhat unintelligible in their handling of our language, they always want something exceedingly difficult to find, something usually on military or political science, harbour construction or the most recondite form of philosophy.

Then there are the remarkable people who "keep up" with the flood of fiction; who say, "Oh, I've read that," in a tone which implies that they are not so far behind as that! "Have you no new novels?" they inquire. Novels get "old," one might suppose, like eggs, in a couple of days. The quest of these seekers of books suggests the story of the lady at a public library who, upon being told that seven new novels had come in that morning, said, "Give me, please, the one that came in last." There are, too, those singular folks who appear regularly every year just before Christmas, buy a great quantity of books for presents, and disappear again until the next year just before the holiday season. What, we have wondered, do they do about books the rest of the time? Ministers are always very trying characters to book clerks. "Beware of the gallery," says a fellow serf to us, "there's a minister browsing around up there." The official servants of the Lord fall, in the book clerk's mind, into that class technically described by him as "stickers." All gentlemen wearing high hats also belong to this classification. Deaf customers are embarrassing, for the reason that one always addresses one's next customer as though he were deaf, too. Foreigners are invariably very polite to clerks. They bow when they enter and take off their hats upon leaving. Very respectful people. "There," said a fellow thrall, "come two old women in at the door. Now, if I were my ancestor, I'd dance around that table with a stone club and brain them." As it is, they ask, "Have you Hopkinson Smith's 'Gondola Days'?" He says, "I think so." A lady, very rich and important looking, wants a book "without an unpleasant ending." "I wonder how this is" (looking at the last page). "No" (closing the book with a thump), "that won't do." A gentleman orders two sets of the Prayer Book and Hymnal, to be marked upon the cover with his name, the words Grace Church and his pew number. He informs us that every year while he is away in the summer his set of these books is stolen.

'Tis a merry life, the book clerk's, and a hard one. Customers: Two youngish women. "Can you wait on us?" They want to get something, do not know just what, for a present. "Oh, no!" they say, "we don't want anything like so big a set as that. Something nicely bound." A copy of "Cranford" is near by. "Oh, when I read it I didn't think it much good." "Poetry?" "No, I don't think she is much interested in poetry." "Do you suppose an art book?"———"No, she is not interested in art." "Memoirs, then?" "No, she would not care for that." "Why, I had no idea," said one somewhat reprovingly to us, "that it would be as hard as this."

A calling which requires the practitioner to turn easily from the recondite gentleman inquiring the author of "Religious Teachers of Ancient Greece" to consideration of the problem (no less recondite) of a lady anxious to find something to entertain a child of five and a half inculcates some degree of mental agility. "I want," said the very fashionable lady, "to get a book for an old man—a" (with some petulance) "very stupid old man." "I want," from a serious old lady, "to get a book for a young man studying for the ministry." "I want," exclaimed a very smart apparition, "a dashing book for a man!" "What is the best book on Russia?" "Do you know, now, if this is a good story?—there are so many poor books nowadays." Says a large, uncommonly black lady, "I want 'Spears of Wheat, No. 3.'" (Discovered to be a prayer book.) "I want the latest book, please, on how to bring up a baby." "I'd like to see what you have on 'physical research.'" "Can you recommend a book for a young man with softening of the brain? Poor fellow, he's in Bloomingdale." "Is there any discount to Christian workers?" "Do you know," a demure person, an awful blank look coming over her face, "what I want has gone quite out of my head." There is an appealing look for help. "Something American," in a patrician voice, "for the ladies to read going over on the boat. This is American, now, is it? New York society? Ah, very good! Have you anything about the Rocky Mountains, or that sort of thing?"

Now we see coming the man who has been directed in a letter from his wife to get a certain book, about which he knows nothing, and the title of which he can not decipher. Here is a person asking for "comfort books" for the sick. Here is Mrs. So-and-So, who tells us her husband is very ill, unconscious; she has to sit up by him all night, and must have something "very amusing" to divert her mind. Here is the angry man to whom by mistake was sent a book inscribed "to my good wife and true." Heaven help the poor book clerk when the same good wife and true comes in with her present of a naughty book with humorous remarks written in it!

Now, how do you like the job?



XX

THE DECEASED

I think it was William Hazlitt's brother who remarked that "no young man thinks he will ever die." Whoever it was he was a mysterious person who lives for us now in that one enduring observation. That is his "literary remains," his "complete works." And many a man has written a good deal more and said a good deal less than that concerning that "animal, man" (in Swift's phrase), who, as Sir Thomas Browne observes, "begins to die when he begins to live."

No young man, I should say, reads obituary notices. They are hardly "live news" to him. Most of us, I fancy, regard these "items" more or less as "dead matter" which papers for some reason or other are obliged to carry. But old people, I have noticed, those whose days are numbered, whose autumnal friends are fast falling, as if leaf by leaf from the creaking tree, those regularly turn to the obituary column, which, doubtless, is filled with what are "personals" for them.

And yet, if all but knew it, there is not in the press any reading so improving as the "obits" (to use the newspaper term), none of so softening and refining a nature, none so calculated to inspire one with the Christian feelings of pity and charity, with the sentiment of malice toward none, to bring anon a smile of tender regard for one's fellow mortals, to teach that man is an admirable creature, full of courage and faith withal, constantly striving for the light, interesting beyond measure, that his destiny is divinely inscrutable, that dust unto dust all men are brothers, and that he, man, is (in the words of "Urn Burial") "a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the tomb." I doubt very much indeed whether any one could read obituaries every day for a year and remain a bad man or woman.

In many respects, the best obituaries are to be found in country papers. There, in country papers, none ever dies. It may be because, as it is said, the country is nearer to God than the town. But so it is that there, in country papers, in the fulness of time, or by the fell clutch of chance, one "enters into his final rest," or "passes from his earth life," or one "on Wed. last peacefully accepted the summons to Eternity," or "on Thurs." (it may be) "passed to his eternal reward." "Died" is indeed a hard word. It has never found admittance to hearts that love and esteem. Whitman (was it not?) when he heard that Carlyle was dead went out in the night and looked up at the stars and said that he did not believe it. Even so, are not all who take their passing "highly esteemed" in country papers? In small places, doubtless, death wears for the community a more tragic mein than in cities, where it is more frequent and where we knew not him that lies on his bier next door but one away. In the country places this man who is now no longer upright and quick was a neighbour to all. And the provincial writer of obituaries follows a high authority, another rustic poet, deathless and known throughout the world, who sang of his Hoosier friend "he is not dead but just away."

When one enters upon his last role in this world, which all fill in their turn, he becomes in rural journals that personage known throughout the countryside as "the deceased." It might be argued that, alas! the only thing you can do with one deceased is to bury him. It might be held that you cannot educate him. That he, the deceased, cannot enter upon the first steps of his career as a bookkeeper. That he cannot marry the daughter of the Governor of the State. That whatever happened to him, whatever he accomplished, enjoyed, endured, in his pilgrimage through this world he experienced before he became, as it is said, deceased. That, in short, he is now dead. And that it should be said of him, as we say in the Metropolitan press, as a young man Mr. Doe did this and later that. But in places simpler, and so more eloquent, than the Metropolis the final fact of one's existence colours all the former things of his career. In country obituaries all that has been done was done by the deceased. In this association of ideas between the prime and the close of life is to be felt a sentiment which knits together each scene. This Mr. Some One did not merely apprentice himself to a printer at fourteen (as city papers say it) and marry at twenty-one. But he that is now deceased was once full of hope and strength (at fourteen), and in the brave days of twenty-one did he, that is now struck down, plight his troth. So, doubtless, runs the thought in that intimate phrase so dear to country papers, "the deceased."

And there are no funerals in the country. That is a word, funeral, of too forbidding, ominous, a sound to be under the broad and open sky. There where the neighbours gather, all those who knew and loved the departed from a boy, the "last sad rites are read," and the "mortuary services are performed." Then from the fruitful valley where he dwelt after his fathers, and their fathers, he mounts again the old red hill, bird enchanted.

He is not buried, though he rests in the warm clasp of the caressing earth. Buried has an inhuman sound, as though a man were a bone. The deceased is always "interred," or he may be "laid to rest," or his "interment takes place."

Now, it is in these biographical annals of small places that one finds the justest estimates of life. There folks are valued for what they are as well as for what they do. Inner worth is held in regard equally with the flash and glitter of what the great world calls success. I was reading just the other day of a late gentleman, "aged 61," whose principal concern appeared to be devotion to his family. His filial feeling was indeed remarkable. It was told that "after the death of his parents, three years ago, he had resided with his sister." After his attachment to his own people, his chief interest, apparently, was in the things of the mind, in literature. He had "never engaged in business," it was said, but he "was a great reader," he could "talk intelligently on many topics which interested him," and in the circles which he frequented he was admired, that is it was thought that he was "quite a bright man." Who would not feel in this sympathetic record of his goodly span something of the charm of the modest nature of this man? Again, there was the recent intelligence concerning William Jackson, "a coloured gentleman employed as a deck hand on a pleasure craft in this harbour," who "met his demise" in an untimely manner. Clothes do not make the man, nor doth occupation decree the bearing. This is a great and fundamental truth very clearly grasped by the country obituary, and much obscured elsewhere.

On the other hand, positively nowhere else does the heart to dare and the power to do find such generous recognition as in the obituaries of country papers. The "prominence" of blacksmiths, general store keepers, undertakers, notaries public, and other townspeople bright in local fame has been made a jest by urban persons of a humorous inclination, who take scorn of merit because it is not vast merit. Pleasing to contemplate in contrast to this waspish spirit is the noble nature of the country obituary, inspiration to humanism. Here was a man, to the seeing eye, of sterling stamp: "He attended public grammar school where he profited by his opportunities in obtaining as good an education as possible, etc." Later in life, be became "well and favourably known for his conservative and sane business methods," and was esteemed by his associates, it is said, "fraternally and otherwise." He was "mourned," by those who "survived" him, as people are not mourned in cities, that is, frankly, in a manner undisguised. Country obituaries are not afraid to be themselves. In this is their appeal to the human heart.

They are the same in spirit, identical in turn of phrase, from Maine to California, from the Gulf to the Upper Provinces. That is one of the remarkable things about them. You might expect to come across, here or there, a writer of country paper obituaries out of step, as it were, with his fellow mutes, so to put it, one raising his voice in a slightly off, or different key, a trace, in short, of the hand of some student of the modes of thought of the world beyond his bosky dell or rolling plain. But it is not so in any paper truly of the countryside. And, perhaps, that is well.

A type of obituary which very likely is read rather generally in cities is that of slow growth and released from the newspaper-office "morgue" as occasion calls. One such timely and capable biographical account is waiting for each of us that is a Vice-President, King, lord of great dominions, high commander of armed forces, intellectual immortal of any kind, recognised superman in this or that. Big Chief anywhere, or beloved popular idol, nicely proportioned according to our space value. Of course, if we are a very great Mogul indeed we get a display head on the first page upon the dramatic occasion of our exit. But, generally speaking, this type of matter would run somewhere between the seventh and the thirteenth or fifteenth page, according to the number of pages of the issue of the paper coinciding with the date of the ending of our day's work. There, if we are pretty important, we should lead the column, and take a two-line head, with a pendant "comb." This, altogether, would announce to the passing eye that we went out (as the poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, puts it) in such or such a year of our age, that pneumonia, or what not, "took" us, that we were a member of one of the city's oldest families, that a family breach was healed at the death of our sister, or the general points of whatever it is that makes us interesting to the paper's circulation. We are likely to have a date line and a brief despatch from Rome, or Savannah, or wherever we happen to be when we shuffle off, stating that we have done so. This to be followed by a "shirt-tail dash." Then begins a beautifully dispassionate and highly dignified recital of the salient facts connected with our career, which may run to a couple of sticks, or, even, did our activities command it, turn the column.

Or, suppose for the sake of our discussion that your achievements have not been quite of the first rank. You get a one-line head, a sub-head, and a couple of paragraphs. Somebody has exclaimed concerning how much life it takes to make a little art. Just so. How much life it takes to make a very little obituary in the great city! Early and late, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, in the sun's hot eye of summer, through the winter's blizzard, year after year for thirty-six years you have been a busy practising physician. You have lived in the thick of births and life and death for thousands of hours. What you know, and have lived and have seen would fill rows of volumes. You are a distinguished member of many learned societies, widely known as an educator. You are good for about a hundred and fifty words.

Perhaps not. Perhaps you were a person of rather minor importance. You are, that is, you were, we will say, an astronomer, or you were a mineralogist, or a former Alderman, or something like that. So you call for a paragraph, with a head. Your virtues (and your vices) have been many. You were three times married. As Mr. Bennett says of another of like momentous history, the love of life was in you, three times you rose triumphant over death. Goodness! what a novel you would make. You call for a paragraph, with a head. All your clubs are given.

You are doing pretty well. Many of us, just somebodies but nobodies in especial particular, do not have a separate head at all but go in a group into the feature "Obituary Notes." Our names are set in "caps," and we have a brisk paragraph apiece, admirable pieces of composition, pellucid, compact, nervous. Our stories are contained in these dry-point-like portraits stript of all that was occasional, accidental, ephemeral, leaving alone the essential facts, such as, for instance, that we were, say, a civil engineer. I think it would be well for each of us occasionally to visualise his obituary "note." This should have the effect of clarifying our outlook. Amid the welter of existence what is it that we are above all to do? To thine own self be true. You are a husband, a father, and a civil engineer. That is all that matters in the end.

But after all, all obituaries in a great city are for the elect. The great majority of us have none at all, in print. What we were is, indeed, graven on the hearts that knew us, and told in the places where we have been. But in the written word we go into the feature headed "Died," a department similar in design to that on the literary page headed "Books Received." We are arranged alphabetically according to the first letter of our surnames. We are set in small type with lines following the name line indented. It is difficult for me to tell with certainty from the printed page but I think we are set without leads. Here again, frequently, the reader comes upon the breath of affection, the hand of some one near to the one that is gone: "Beloved husband of ———." And he is touched by the realisation that even in the rushing city, somewhere unseen amid the hard glitter and the gay scene, to-day warm hearts are torn, and that simple grief throbs in and makes perennially poignant a bromidian phrase.

As this column lengthens the paragraphs shorten, until is reached what seems to me the most moving obituary of all, that most eloquent of the destiny of men. "ROE. ——— Richard. 1272 West 96th St., Dec. 30, aged 54." It is like to the most moving line, perhaps, in modern literature. For nowhere else, I think, is there one of such simplicity and grandeur as this from "The Old Wives' Tale": "He had once been young, and he had grown old, and was now dead."



XXI

A TOWN CONSTITUTIONAL

There is certainly no more grotesque fallacy than that humorously bigoted notion so generally entertained, particularly by our friends of other nations (at any rate, before the war), that the only thing in the world for which we as a people care is success as measured by money. A walk about any day will give this ridiculous idea a black eye. Any one with ears to his head will perceive that we scorn things which are to be had for money. Money! What is that? Phew! Everybody has it. It is mine, it is yours, it is nothing—trash. Any one with a brain-pan under his hat will recognise inside of half an hour that we are anything but a nation of shopkeepers spiritually. It is as plain as a pike-staff that we are a nation of perfectly rabid idealists. It is sounded on every side that the things which we most fervently prize, inordinately covet, envy possession of, and hold most proudly, are precisely those things which the wealth of the Indies would not procure. To wit:

Jimmy was a waiter, humble, but celebrated—as a waiter—among a circle. An admirer of Jimmy's, a journalist continually on the lookout for copy, wrote him up for the paper at space rates. Thence till the day Broadway suffered his loss by untimely death did Jimmy fold and unfold his worn clipping to exhibit with a full heart this tribute to him which was of a kind (as he never failed to say) which "money could not buy." It is reported upon reasonably reliable authority that Jimmy's last words, in a faint whisper, were: "Money could not have bought———" And then he went on his way.

So it was, too, with a tobacconist whom I knew—who had an article framed which referred to his shop. "In such a paper, too!" he exclaimed a hundred times a day, "money could not have bought it."

Your aunt has a lot of old spavined furniture which would bring about tu'pence at public sale. Some of it was your great-aunt's. All of it has been in the family from time immemorial; and its peculiar and considerable value, your aunt and her neighbours are agreed, resides in the esoteric fact that it is the kind of thing which "money couldn't buy."

Health is a great blessing, and, we are repeatedly told, we should prize it beyond measure,—as it is a thing that money will not buy.

His money, it is commonly said of a rich man in bereavement, will not bring his son back to life. The impotency of money in the life of the spirit is notorious among us. Of a deceased miser we declare with satisfaction: "Well, he can't take his money with him." And money—the righteous well know—will get none into heaven.

What is the moving theme that holds the multitude at the movie theatre bound in a spell? What is it that answers deep unto deep between the literature vended at drug stores and the people?—Concern for money overthrown by idealism! The triumph of ethereal love over the base temptation of lucre! Is it not so: the rich wooer in the top hat and the elegant Easter-parade coat is turned away, and the poor lover with his flannel shirt open at the collar and a dinner-pail hung upon his arm is chosen for bluebird happiness—and the heart of the maligned masses is satisfied.

Money (the conviction has passed into an industrious bromideum) will not buy happiness.

I knew a man who had a wife; and he was told by sage counsellors that if he would treat her right she would give him "what money could not buy."

But what need is there to multiply examples? Take a turn around the block and return with the wisdom that money can not buy. Come; get your stick and let us go.

A beneficent Providence, sir, has caused it to be that the finest shows in this world are free of all men. Nature charges no admission fee. The dawn and the evening are gratis. In the matter of art, the performances of the little men of the passing hour are to be seen in Bond Street, on the Avenue, and at the academies and societies, for a price; but those treasure houses of the enduring masterpieces, the great museums of the world, demand naught from him that hath nothing. A collector of customs sitteth at the golden door of the movies; but the far more delightful and far more human shows shown in the show windows are quite free for all to see. And to those blessed ones whose eyes have not lost their innocence and whose hearts remain sweet and simple the costly spectacles of the world are but tawdry vanity as compared with the feasts of entertainment enacted daily in show windows.

One of the very best theatres in this country for entertainments of this nature is lower Sixth Avenue, though the Bowery is not to be overlooked, and the passionate lover of pleasure should not neglect any business thoroughfare which presents a particularly shabby appearance. The actors and actresses in these fascinating histrionic presentations are not called comedians and tragedians, comediennes and tragediennes—but "demonstrators." The effect of their performances thus is twofold: they gratify the spectator's sense of the humorous or the curious, and they demonstrate to his intelligence the value of something with whose merits possibly he is not acquainted.

There are not many things in life, I think, which you find pleasanter than this: You are slightly obstructed in your perambulations on a fine afternoon by a small knot of loiterers pausing before a shop window in which an active young man of admirably mobile countenance is holding forth in dumb show. Your progress is slackened as you edge about the throng with the intention of proceeding on your way. As it were, you poise on the wing. Then, like a warming liquor stealing through the veins, the awakening of your interest in the artful antics of this young man makes fainter and fainter your will to proceed on your course, until it dies softly away. What is this ridiculous thing he is doing? By its magnetism it has, at any rate, become for you the supreme interest, for the moment, of the universe.

With a horrible grimace the young man yanks fiercely at his cravat. It does not budge, or at least only very slightly. With still further display of energetic effort, accompanied by a ferocious expression of pained and enraged exasperation, he yanks again. No, the cravat is stuck fast behind within the collar. With a gesture of hopeless despair and a face of pitiful woe the young man abandons his struggle with the ordinary kind of cravat which loops around the neck, and which, foolishly enough, is so universally worn. You see, so his eloquent flinging out of the hands saith, it is of no use. He shakes his fist. Then, registering the extremity of disgust, he rips the loathesome, cravat-clogged collar from his neck and flings it from him.

What will he do now? is the thought that holds his audience bound in a spell. Ah! His face breaks into light. He snatches up his collar and industriously adjusts it without a cravat. He picks up a small object which he holds aloft between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that. It is the ready-made bow of a bow tie, the bow and nothing more. Yes, there are patent prongs to it, which he deftly slips beneath the wings of his collar. So! No trouble whatever. Instantaneous. A smile of luxurious blandness spreads over the face of the young man. Thus he stands for a moment. Then stoops and places in a corner of the window a large card inscribed "Ten Cents." With a pleasing sense of curiosity satisfied, the current of your own life as distinct from show-window shows flows back again into your consciousness. You turn, and the great movement of the city takes you, although some souls of spacious leisure and of apparently insatiable curiosity linger on to drink in the happiness of witnessing a repetition of the fascinating exhibition.

Of such shows is the freedom of the kingdom of heaven. There is the other young man in a show window a bit further on who all day long gashes blocks of wood with a magic razor, only to sharpen it to greater keenness, so that before you he continually cuts with it the finest hairs. There is the young woman garbed as a nurse who treats the corns on a gigantic plaster foot. In show windows cooks are cooking appetising dishes; damsels are combing magnificent, patent-medicine grown tresses; and in show windows are spectacles of infinite variety and without number. All for the delight without cost of a penny of those whose hearts are as a little child. There is the trim maid who folds and unfolds a Davenport couch. I had a friend one time of a roving disposition (alas! he is now in jail) who once got the amazingly enviable job of doing nothing but smoke an endless succession of cigars in a show window.

Brother (as Lavengro used to say), there is nothing high about the cost of pleasure. But hold! would you, without a thought, pass by here? Though this, yon show, is without its rapt throng to do it reverence, it is, to an ardent mind, the most enticing, and the most instructive, of all the classic exhibitions to be seen from the pavement, the one fullest of all of (in the words of one Quinney) "meat and gravy." Always tarry, fellow man, before the cheap photographer's.

Any one who has ever been enough interested in human matters to examine the sidewalk exhibitions of the cheap photographer does not need to be told that the fine old star character there, a character somewhat analogous in popular appeal and his permanency as an institution to the heavy villain of melodrama, a character old as the hills, yet fresh as the morning, is the naked baby. Nobody ever saw a cheap photographer's display without its naked baby. Just why he should be naked is not clear. However, there is undoubtedly inherent in the mind of the race this instinct,—that you should begin your photographic life naked. Perhaps this is in response to a sentiment for symbol: naked came ye into the world. Perhaps it is because your face at the time of your initial photograph is as yet so uncarved by time that it is deemed more interesting to display the whole of you, clothed, as it were, in innocence. The art of painting, of course, from the earliest rendering of the Child of the Virgin down to Mary Cassatt, has been fond of portraying infants nude,—the photographer may be said only to continue a very old tradition. But painting has always observed the baby with ceremonious respect; painting stripped him to admire him and softly caress him. The broad humanity of the cheap photographer "jokes" him, as you may say.

The most popular way of presenting the baby at the cheap photographer's,—seated, standing, on his back, or on his belly; stark naked, or (as sometimes he is found) girded about the loins, or (as, again, he is seen) less naked and wearing an abbreviated shirt, and in various other stages of habilimentation,—is on a whitish hairy rug. No background but the hairy rug. It is background (very largely), one suspects, that gives one the sense of a baby's value. The idea occurs to a thoughtful observer of his photograph that it is to a considerable degree from background, surrounding atmosphere, local colour, that the baby derives personal identity. Twenty cabinet-sized naked babies, each on a hairy rug:—one conceives how an unscrupulous photographer (as may very likely commonly be the case) might save money on negatives, after he had a stock of a little variety, by snapping babies with an unloaded camera and printing from old plates, without anybody's being the wiser. (Here, indeed, would be a utilitarian motive behind the baby's being naked of articles of identification.) It is, alas! undermining to the pride of race to reflect that that photograph of one's cousin's fine new baby Edward, which reminded every one so much of the infant's mother, may not impossibly have been the original likeness of some baby now long extinct.

History, so called, deals exclusively with persons of distinction; fiction, though more catholic, sees man in a glamour, with the various prejudices this way and that of a mortal eye. The development of the discovery announced by Daguerre in 1839, and first applied to portraits by one Draper,—this is the great historian. The photograph business, sir, alone sees life steadily and sees it whole. Photography is the supreme sociologist, master psychologist. In the sidewalk display of the cheap photographer is the poor, naked, human story,—poignantly touching, chastening of pride, opening the heart of the responsive beholder to deeper knowledge of the inherent kinship of all humankind.

How does the consummate realism of the cheap photographer show its babies of yester-year, clothed now in the raiment of mature years and simple honours?

That appealing spectacle, the girl who has performed somewhere in curiously home-made-looking "tights," and, laughing roguishly at the camera, been photographed afterward (from this sight what roue would not turn away his sinful eyes in shame and pity?). The highly satisfied young man in the very rented-appearing evening clothes (photographed, it is apparent, in the day time). The blank-looking person who for some cryptic reason is enamoured of the studious, literary pose, and appears, in effect like a frontispiece portrait, glancing up from a writing table (an obviously artificial cigar between the fingers of one hand, apparently made of carbon, and, presumably, the property of the photographer). The aspiring amateur boxer, in position, with his sparing trunks on and an American flag around his waist (or sometimes, in default of trunks, he is seen in his nether undergarment). The jolly girl in boy's clothes (who has not seen her?). The little child in costume performing a cute dance. The coloured beau, a heavy swell, in spats and a van Bibber overcoat. The gay banqueters of the So-and-So Association, around their festive board (one man, devilish fellow! holding aloft a beer bottle). The young girl in confirmation attire, standing awkwardly by a table (her slip of a mind, as she stands there, very probably less upon her God than upon her common, foolish dress). The team of amateur comedians (sad spectacle!). The bride and groom (perennial as the naked baby) standing, curiously enough, upon our old friend, the hairy rug. The family group (all the figures of which have a curious wax-work effect, reminiscent of the late Eden Musee). The policeman, in uniform (sitting in a chair of cathedral architecture). The fireman (a hero, perhaps,—though no man is a hero, merely amazingly human, to the cheap photographer's camera). The youthful swains posed beside that indestructible stage property of the popular photographer, the artificial tree stump. The immortal woman vain of that part of her which Mr. Mantalini referred to as "outline," and careful to keep her near arm from obstructing the spectator's view (sometimes she is clothed; sometimes simply wound in a sheet; sometimes, in either case, she is like the Dowager whose outline Mr. Mantalini described as "dem'd"). All these—and many others—are the traditions of the cheap photography.

Nobody, apparently, is so unattractive, nobody so poor, nobody wears such queer clothes, nobody is so old, or faded, or fat, or "skinny," or short, or tall, or black, or bow-legged, or so anything at all, that he or she won't pose for a photograph. So that it may reasonably be said, that to have lost the instinct to have one's "picture taken" is to have lost the love of life. Nobody, no doubt, but is interesting to somebody. And, as Stevenson has said, can any one be regarded as useless so long as he has a friend?

And when—brother—at length, one has withdrawn forevermore from the tawdry stage of the cheap photographer's, a last view is taken of one, as it were, in the grave. Side by side at the cheap photographer's with the naked baby and with the bride and groom—is the "floral emblem."



XXII

READING AFTER THIRTY

Somewhere in the mass of that splendid, highly personal journalism of his, William Hazlitt declares that he was never able to read a book through after thirty. That penetrating man, Samuel Butler, reflecting in his "Note-Books" on "What Audience to Write For," says: "People between the ages of twenty and thirty read a good deal, after thirty their reading drops off and by forty is confined to each person's special subject, newspapers and magazines." Thirty again, you see.

We all have friends who have been omniverous readers, persons who, to our admiration and despair, seem to have read everything in "literature." It may have struck us, however, as a curious thing that, except possibly in rare instances, such persons appear not to read much now, beyond newspapers and magazines. The upshot of what they are able to say, when you ask them why this is true, is that one simply reaches a time of life when one "quits reading," as one ceases to dance, or cools in interest toward the latest fashions in overcoats.

But, undoubtedly there are persons who continue to read, apparently with unabated industry and zest, no matter how old they may become. Dr. Johnson, of course, was a constant reader all his life, and would cheerfully read anything whether it was readable or not. Though did not he somewhere confess to himself that he did not read things through? Mr. Huneker, who is well on the richer side of thirty, would seem to read everything printed about five minutes after it has left the press, and before anybody else has had a chance to see it. There are so many capital letters on the pages of his own books that it makes one dizzy to look at them. Whether or not he reads through all the books he mentions is of course (as he is a reviewer) a question. And, then, both Mr. Huneker and the Doctor belong to the trade, so to say. Another startlingly prodigious reader is Theodore Roosevelt, hilariously past thirty, and not exclusively identified with literary "shop." He is continually discovering and vigorously recommending new poets and short-story writers whom professional critics have not yet had time to get around to. It does not appear that a fundamental or organic change in the composition of the human brain which inhibits reading occurs more or less suddenly at thirty.

Why then do so many reading animals cease at about that time to read? Butler does not say. Arnold Bennett (was it not?) has asked what's the use of his reading more, he knows enough. Hazlitt, in his own case, surmised that the keener interest of writing rather asphyxiated the impulse to read. And, doubtless, that generally is about the size of it. As in the cure of the drink habit, a new and more intense interest will drive out the old. The reader, of course, is a spectator, not an active participant in the world's doings. After thirty, desirable citizens of ordinary energy have little opportunity for the role of noncombatant, and the taste of action and of success, like the taste of war, makes them impatient with quieter things. Failures read more than successful men. Bachelors no doubt read much more than husbands. And fathers seldom are great readers. This last fact may explain the observation that even college professors do not read fanatically. When they are "off" awhile they "play with" their children (children are great enemies everywhere to reading), who are much more real to them than study.

In one of his later books George Moore chronicles his resolve to cultivate the habit of reading, to learn to read again. And he sucks much naive pleasure from the contemplation of this prospective enterprise; but he finds it very difficult to persevere in it, and drifts away instead into reveries of what he has read. There is a thought here, however, to be hearkened to: the idea of learning to read again.

What is it that happens to one in consequence of his ceasing to read? He suffers a hardening of the intellectual arteries. There are quaint old codgers one knows here and there who declare that in fiction there has "been nothing since Dickens." They are delightful, of course; but one would rather see than be one. We all know many persons whose intellectual clock stopped some time ago, and there are people whose minds apparently froze at about the time when they should have begun to ripen, and which are like blocks of ice with a fish (or a volume of Huxley) inside. Nothing now can get in.

At those times of earnest introspection, when one would "swear off" this or that, would reduce one's smoking, would adopt the principle of "do it now," and so on—at those times an excellent New Year's resolution, or birthday resolution, or first day of the month resolution, would be to re-learn to read, to keep, as Dr. Johnson said of his friendships, one's reading continually "in good repair."



EPILOGUE

ON WEARING A HAT

There is a good deal to be said about wearing a hat. And yet this humorous custom, this rich topic, of wearing a hat has been sadly neglected, as far as I can make out, by scholars, scientists, poets, composers, and other "smart" people.

Man has been variously defined, as the religious animal, and so on; but also, to the best of my knowledge and belief, he is the only animal that wears a hat. He has become so accustomed to the habit of wearing his hat that he does not feel that he is himself out of doors without it. Mr. Howells (I think it was) has told us in one of his novels of a young man who had determined upon suicide. With this intent he made a mad dash for the sea. But on his way there a sudden gust of wind blew off his hat; instinctively he turned to recover it, and this action broke the current of his ideas. With his hat he recovered his reason, and went home as alive as usual. His hat has come to mean for man much more than a protection for his head. It is for him a symbol of his manhood. You cannot more greatly insult a man than by knocking off his hat. As a sign of his reverence, his esteem, his respect, a man bares his head. Though, indeed, the contentious Mr. Chesterton somewhere argues that there is no more reason for a man's removing his hat in the presence of ladies than for his taking off his coat and waistcoat.

In the more complex social organisms of Europe the custom of lifting the hat to other men whom one thus acknowledges as superiors is much more prevalent than in our democratic country. Though in America we remove our hats in elevators upon the entrance of ladies, a practice which is not followed in England. It was Mrs. Nickleby who indicated the extreme politeness of the noble gentlemen who showed her to her carriage by the celebrated remark that they took their hats "completely off." We express great joy by casting our hats into the air. If I wish to show my contempt for you I will wear my hat in your house; if I wish you to clear out of my house I say: "Here's your hat"; if I am moved to admiration for you I say: "I take off my hat to you." I greatly enjoy seeing you run after your hat in the street, because you are thereby made excessively ridiculous. The comic Irishman of the vaudeville stage makes his character unmistakable to all by carrying his clay pipe in his hat band. The English painter, Thomas Gainsborough, gave his name to a hat. The seasoned newspaper man displays his cynical nature and complete disillusionment by wearing his hat at his desk. A hat worn tilted well back on the head indicates an open nature and a hail-fellow-well-met disposition; while a hat decidedly tilted over one eye is the sign of a hard character, and one not to be trifled with. In the literature of alcoholism it is written that a common hallucination of the inebriate is that a voice cries after him: "Where did you get that white hat?" Upon assuming office the cardinal is said to "take the hat." When a man is conspicuously active in American political life "his hat is in the ring." Whistler topped off his press-agent eccentricity with a funny hat. The most idiosyncratic hat at present in America is that which decorates the peak of Mr. Bliss Carman. The hat-stands in our swagger hotels make a great deal of money; I know a gentleman who affirmed that a hat which had originally cost him three dollars had cost him eighteen dollars to be got back from hat-checking stands. Cheap people evade the hat-boy.

When the present enthusiast for the splendid subject of hats was a small boy it was the ambition of every small boy of his acquaintance to be regarded as of sufficient age to possess what we termed a "dice hat," what is commonly called a "derby," what in England they call a "darby," what Dickens aptly referred to as a "pot-hat," what, in one highly diverting form, is sometimes referred to on the other side as a "billycock." That singular structure for the human head, the derby hat, one time well-nigh universally worn, has now gone somewhat out of fashion and been superseded by the soft hat of smart design, though there are indications, I fear, that the derby is coming in again. When we were young the soft hat was most commonly worn by veterans of the Civil War, in a pattern called a "slouch hat" or "Grand Army hat." Though, indeed, such romantic beings as cowboys in popular ten cent literature and the late Buffalo Bill wore sombreros, and the picturesque Mexican a high peaked affair.

Our grandfathers wore "stove-pipe hats"; and the hats of politicians were one time frequently called "plug hats." This male head-dress even more extraordinary than the derby, books of etiquette sometimes say you should not call a "silk hat" but a "high hat." In London but a few years ago no man ever went into the City with other than a top-hat, or "topper" as they say there. It is said that the going out of general favour of the silk hat has been occasioned in a considerable degree by the popularity of raincoats in preference to umbrellas. If you observe any great crowd in England to-day you will find in it few hats of any kind; it is in the main a sea of caps. The American "dude" and the anti-bellum British "knut" always wore silk hats. Gentlemen at the British race courses and fine old clubmen of Pall Mall affect a white or grey top hat, of the sort which was so becoming an ornament to the late King Edward. The opera hat is said to have startled many persons who had not seen it before. Intoxicated gentlemen in funny pictures have always smashed their silk hats. Some men have worn a silk hat only on the occasion of their marriage. High hats are worn by small boys in England. The most useful occupation to-day is that which envolves the wearing of a "tin hat."

The day in the autumn fixed by popular mandate when the straw hat is to be discarded for the season is hilariously celebrated in Wall Street by the destruction by the affronted populace of the straw hats of those who have had the temerity or the thoughtlessness to wear them. Coloured men in livery stables, however, sometimes wear straw hats the year round. To the habit generally of wearing a hat baldness is attributed by some. And the luxuriant hair of Indians and of the cave-man is pointed to as illustrating the beneficent result of not wearing a hat. And now and then somebody turns up with the idea in his head that he doesn't need a hat on it. There is a white garbed gentleman of Grecian mould who parades Broadway every day without a hat.

It is indisputable that the hats women wear to-day are more beautiful than they have been for generations, perhaps centuries. Yet this fact has met with little expression of appreciation. This present excellence is because women's hats now are the product of intellectual design. In the '80's the idea was entertained that decoration of a woman's hat was increased by attaching to it something in the way of beads or feathers wherever there was a space free. A fashionable woman's hat to-day may be as simple and, in its way, as effective as art as a Whistler symphony; a single splotch of colour, it may be, acting as a foil against a rich mass. Or the hat is a replica, as it were, of the celebrated design of a period in history. But the erudite subject of women's hats should not be touched upon without a salute to that racy model which crowns the far-famed 'Arriet, whose Bank-holiday attire was so delightedly caressed by the pencil of the late Phil May. None could forget his tenderly human drawing of the lady with the bedraggled feather over one eye who has just been ejected by the bar-man, and who turns to him to say: "Well, the next time I goes into a public house, I goes where I'm respected!"

A hat is distinguished from a cap or bonnet by the possession of a brim. The modern hat can be traced back to the petasus worn by the ancient Romans when on a journey; and hats were also thus used by the earlier Greeks. Not until after the Norman conquest did the use of hats begin in England. A "hatte of biever" was worn by one of the "nobels of the lande, mett at Clarendom" about the middle of the 12th century; and Froissart describes hats that were worn at Edward's court in 1340, when the Garter order was instituted. The use of the scarlet hat which distinguishes cardinals was sanctioned in the 13th century by Pope Innocent IV. The merchant in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales had

"On his head a Flaundrish bever hat";

and from this period onwards frequent mention is made of "felt hattes," "beever hattes," and other like names. Throughout mediaeval times the wearing of a hat was regarded as a mark of rank and distinction. During the reign of Elizabeth the caprices of fashion in hats were many and various.

The Puritans affected a steeple crown and broad brimmed hat, while the Cavaliers adopted a lower crown and a broader brim ornamented with feathers. In the time of Charles II. still greater breadth of brim and a profusion of feathers were fashionable features of hats, and the gradual expansion of brim led to the device of looping or tying up that portion. Hence arose various fashionable "cocks" in hats; and ultimately, by the looping up equally of three sides of the low-crowned hat, the cocked hat which prevailed throughout the 18th century was elaborated. The Quaker hat, plain, low in crown, and broad in brim, originated with the sect in the middle of the 17th century. The silk hat is an article of recent introduction. Though it was known in Florence about a century ago, its manufacture was not introduced into France till about 1825, and its development has taken place entirely since that period. In all kinds of hat-making the French excel; in the United Kingdom the felt hat trade is principally centred in the neighbourhood of Manchester; and in the United States the States of New York and New Jersey enjoy the greater part of the industry.

So much for hats.

THE END