both a religious and artistic outlook in the eyes of these
sticklers for fashion and dogma, albeit, it might be looked upon as more
or less disappointing by the habitues of the Union League Club or the
devotees at St. Thomas.

If the rivet, which at some previous date had held the two halves of the
scissors together, happens to be lost, or if it has worn so loose that
these members "do not speak as they pass by," a jack knife or even a
butcher's knife is no stranger to the tonsorial process of these
followers of the elusive god of style.

I do not know that I have ever met a Tunker so lost to a deep sense of
religious duty, or a Ridger sufficiently devoid of the pride of personal
appearance, that he would "go to town" without having first performed
this rite.

It is a serious business.

In the house of my old friend Jeb Hilson there had once been a "lookin'
glass" of no mean proportions, if those of his neighbors may be taken as
the standard, and how else do we measure elegance or style? It had
occupied a black frame, and a position on the wall directly over a
"toilet," which was the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room.
At the present time there was nothing to tell the tale but a large nail
(from which hung a bunch of seed onions,) and the smoked outline of
something which had been nearly fourteen inches long and not far from
the same width. In front of this drab outline Jeb Hilson always stood to
shave. His memory was so tenacious that I never observed that he noticed
the absence of the glass. He gazed steadily at the wall and worked the
scissors so deftly that the stubble rained in little showers upon the
top of the "toilet" and within the open bosom of his tennis shirt. Not
that Jeb Hilson ever heard of tennis, or knew that he was clad in a
garment of so approved a metropolitan style and make; but that was the
pattern he had worn for many years, and it was the one which his women
folk were best able to reproduce. His flannel ones were gray, and his
trousers were belted about with a leather strap. For full dress
occasions he wore a white cotton shirt of the same pattern and a brown
homespun vest. This latter garment was seldom buttoned. Why hide the
glory of that shirt? If Jeb owned a coat I have never seen it. He
appeared to think it a useless garment.

I believe I did not say that Jeb Hilson was the leader of those who
eschewed all hair upon the face. Whether this was done to show a
profounder con