t company. It is possible, of course, to wear a fur coat in a
motor-bus, but if you do you will assuredly have a sense that you are a
little over-dressed, a trifle conspicuous, that the fellow-passengers are
mentally remarking that such a coat ought to have a carriage of its own. It
would provoke the comment that I heard the other night as two ladies in
evening dress left a bus in a pouring rain. "Well," said one of the other
lady passengers--a little enviously I thought, but still pertinently--"if I
could afford to wear such fine clothes I think I would take a Cab." Yes,
decidedly, the fur-lined coat would not be complete without the motor-car.

And then consider how it limits your freedom and raises the tariff against
you. The tip that would be gratefully received if you were getting into
that modest coat that you have discarded would be unworthy of the fur-lined
standard that you have deliberately adopted. The recipient would take it
frigidly, with a glance at the luxurious garment into which he had helped
you--a glance that would cut you to the quick. Your friends would have to
be fur-lined, too, and your dinners would no longer be the modest affairs
of old, but would soar to the champagne standard. It would not be possible
to slip unnoticed into your favourite little restaurant in Soho to take
your simple chop, or to go in quest of that wonderful restaurant of Arne's
of which "Aldebaran" keeps the secret. The modesty of Arne's would make you
blush for your fur-lined coat.

"The genteel thing," said Tony Lumpkin's friend, "is the genteel thing at
any time, if so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation according-ly."
That is it. The fur-lined coat is a genteel thing; but you have to be "in a
concatenation according-ly." And there's the rub. It is not the coat, but
its trimmings, so to speak, that give us pause. When you put on the coat
you insensibly put off your old way of life. You set up a new standard, and
have got to adapt your comings and goings, your habits and your expenditure
to it. I once knew a man who had a fur-lined coat presented to him. It was
a disaster. He could not live "in a concatenation according-ly." He lost
his old friends without getting new ones. And his end ... Well, his end
confirmed me in the conviction of the unwisdom of wearing a fur-lined coat
before you are able, or disposed, to mould your life to the fur-lined
standard.

IN PRAISE OF WALKING

I started out the other day