ng to do but
do nothing. Our barber is a delightful fellow; he looks benign and does
not prattle; he respects the lobes of our ears and other vulnerabilia.
But for some inscrutable reason we feel strangely ill at ease in his
chair. We can't think of anything to think about. Blankly we brood in
the hope of catching the hem of some intimation of immortality. But no,
there is nothing to do but sit there, useless as an incubator with no
eggs in it. The processes of wasting and decay are hurrying us rapidly
to a pauperish grave, every instant brings us closer to a notice in the
obit column, and yet we sit and sit without two worthy thoughts to rub
against each other.

Oh, the poverty of mortal mind, the sad meagerness of the human soul!
Here we are, a vital, breathing entity, transformed to a mere chemical
carcass by the bleak magic of the barber's chair. In our anatomy of
melancholy there are no such atrabiliar moments as those thirty-three
(and a quarter) minutes once every ten weeks. Roughly speaking, we spend
three hours of this living death every year.

And yet, perhaps it is worth it, for what a jocund and pantheistic
merriment possesses us when we escape from the shop! Bay-rummed,
powdered, shorn, brisk and perfumed, we fare down the street exhaling
the syrups of Cathay. Once more we can take our rightful place among
aggressive and well-groomed men; we can look in the face without
blenching those human leviathans who are ever creased, razored, and
white-margined as to vest. We are a man among men and our untethered
mind jostles the stars. We have had our hair cut, and no matter what
gross contours our cropped skull may display to wives or ethnologists,
we are a free man for ten dear weeks.

BROWN EYES AND EQUINOXES

"What is an equinox?" said Titania.

I pretended not to hear her and prayed fervently that the inquiry would
pass from her mind. Sometimes her questions, if ignored, are effaced by
some other thought that possesses her active brain. I rattled my paper
briskly and kept well behind it.

"Yes," I murmured husbandly, "delicious, delicious! My dear, you
certainly plan the most delightful meals." Meanwhile I was glancing
feverishly at the daily Quiz column to see if that noble cascade of
popular information might give any help. It did not.

Clear brown eyes looked across the table gravely. I could feel them
through the spring overcoat ads.

"What is an equinox?"

"I think I must have left my