age
in his career.

"After all, Harry was no dunce, but he was not yet convinced."

IV

IN WHICH SOCRATES ENCOUNTERS "NEW THOUGHT" AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HAIR

"When people have little to do they go back to childishness. They long
for novelty--new playthings, new adventures, new sensations, new
friends. So our upper classes are utterly restless. Every old pleasure
is a slough of despond. The ladies have tried jewels, laces, crests,
titled husbands, divorces, gambling, cocktails, cigarettes, and other
branches of exhilaration. They have passed through the slums of
literature and of the East Side of Gotham. The gentlemen have shown
them the way and smiled with amusement and gone on to greater
triumphs. To these people every old idea is 'bromide.' It bores them.
They scoff at men 'who take themselves seriously.' In a word, Moses
and the Prophets are so much 'dope.' And they are excellent people who
really want to make the world better, but the childish craze for
novelty is upon them. Mrs. Revere-Chalmers was one of this kind. Harry
came to me next day at my house and said:

"'By Jove! you know, it was my friend Mrs. R.-C. who wore the black
square. But she is really a charming woman--not at all a bad sort. I
want you to know her better. She made me promise to bring you over
to-morrow afternoon if you would come.'

"We went. It was a 'new-thought' tea--a deep, brain-racking,
forefinger-on-the-brow function. You could see the thoughts of the
ladies and sometimes hear them as a 'professor' with long hair and
smiles of fathomless inspiration wrapped himself in obscurity and
called unto them out of the depths. He was all depth. They gazed at
his soulful eyes and plunged into deep thought, catching at straws,
and he returned to New York by the next train and probably made
another payment, on account, to his landlady. Tea and conversation
followed his departure.

"I had observed that Mrs. Revere-Chalmers had undergone a singular
change of aspect, but failed to locate the point of difference until a
sister had said to her in a tone of honeyed deviltry:

"'My dear, you are growing younger--quite surely younger, and your
hair is so lovely and so--different! You know what I mean--it has the
luster of youth, and the shade is adorable without a trace of gray in
it.'

"This last phrase was the point of the dagger, and Mrs. Chalmers felt
it. Sure enough, her hair had changed its hue, and was undeniably
fuller and younger.