reverse of Millard's life was in a matter of dress and etiquette,
the innate force of his nature sent him by mere rebound in the direction
of a man of fashion--that is to say, an artist not in words or pigments,
but in dress and manners.

II.

THE EVOLUTION OF A SOCIETY MAN.

It is the first step that costs, say the French, and Millard made those
false starts that are inevitable at the outset of every career. A
beginner has to trust somebody, and in looking around for a mentor he
fell into the hands of a fellow-boarder, one Sampson, who was a quiet
man with the air of one who knows it all and is rather sorry that he
does. Sampson fondly believed himself a man of the world, and he had the
pleasure of passing for one among those who knew nothing at all about
the world. He was a reflective man, who had given much thought to that
gravest problem of a young man's life--how to keep trousers from bagging
at the knees, the failure to solve which is one of the most pathetic
facts of human history. After he had made one or two mistakes in
following the dicta that Sampson uttered with all the diffidence of a
papal encyclical, Millard became aware that in social matters pretension
is often in inverse ratio to accomplishment. About the time that he gave
up Sampson he renounced the cheap tailor into whose hands he had
unwarily fallen, and consigned to oblivion a rather new thirty-dollar
dress-suit in favor of one that cost half a hundred dollars more. He had
by this time found out that the society which he had a chance to meet
moved only in a borderland, and, like the ambitious man he was, he began
already to lay his plans broad and deep, and to fit himself, by every
means within his reach, for success in the greater world beyond.

Having looked about the circle of his small acquaintance in vain for a
guide, he bethought him that there were probably books on etiquette. He
entered a bookstore one day with the intention of asking for some work
of the sort, but finding in the proprietor a well-known depositor of the
bank, Charley bought a novel instead. Behold already the instinct of a
man of the world, whose role it is to know without ever seeming to
learn!

When at length Millard had secured a book with the title, "Guide to Good
Manners as Recognized in the Very Best Society. By One of the Four
Hundred," he felt that he had got his feet on firm ground.

It chanced about this time that Sampson brought an old college chum