it took a
week to tie on the machinery. Off with the pantaloons; on with
the skirts; down with the broadcloth; hurrah for the cotton and
hey for victory, and a look at his future husband.

To an inventor of theatrical costumes hied he with this fell
design in his heart.

The requisite paraphernalia were bargained for and sent home to
the ambitious voyager, who, at the sight thereof, was "astonished"
in advance, and stricken aghast by the complicated mysteries of
laces, ribbons, strings, bones, buttons, pins, capes, collars,
and other inexplicable articles that met his gaze.

The question instantly occurred, "Could he get into these
things?"

Not a bit of it; he would sooner undertake to report in
short-hand the speech of a thunder-cloud, and with much better
prospects of success. He felt his own insignificance, and as he
looked out at the window, he regarded a passing female with awe.
He felt that he was fast becoming imbecile, not to say idiotic,
when he bethought him of his friends. Two discreet married men,
who knew the ropes, were called to the rescue, and began the
work; they piled on layer after layer of the material, and in
the course of four or five hours had built him into a pyramid of
the proper size, when they gave him their solemn assurance that
he was "all right." He has since discovered that they had tied
his under-sleeves round his ankles, and that the things he wore
on his arms must have belonged somewhere else. There was trouble
about the hair, and it required the combined ingenuity and wisdom
of the masculine trio to keep the bonnet on, and this difficulty
was only overcome at last by tying strings from the inside of the
crown of that invention to the ears of the sufferer.

Then, and not till then, had anybody thought of the whiskers.
They must be sacrificed; and though the miserable victim to his
own ambition consented to the disfigurement, how was it to be
accomplished? The luckless Johannes could no more sit down in a
barber's chair than the City Hall could get into an omnibus. At
last he knelt down, which was the nearest approach he could make
to a sitting position, and Jenkins, mounted on the bed, shaved
him as well as he could at arm's length.

When the operation was concluded, his head looked as if it had
been parboiled and the skin taken off. He didn't dare to curse
Jenkins for his clumsiness, knowing that if he relieved his mind
in that desirable manner, Jenkins would refuse to help