my own, adventures which have had their
final culmination in a manner most delightful to me, and in which
consummation you have been an agent. Indeed, but for your friendship I
should not now be the happy man I am. Without further consuming time
by a preamble which the progress of the tale will render unnecessary,
I will proceed.

"Last summer, I spent a portion of the heated term at Green Lake,
Wisconsin. I know that sentiment in this city is somewhat unequally
divided upon the question of the comparative charms of Green Lake and
Lake Geneva and that the former resort has not acquired a vogue equal
to that of the latter, but I must say I greatly prefer Green Lake. I
have never been at Lake Geneva, it is true, but nevertheless, I prefer
Green Lake.

"The hotel where I stayed was very well filled and the manager was
enjoying a highly prosperous season. Yet though there were so many
people there I made no acquaintances in the first week of my sojourn.
Nor in the second week did I come to know more than three or four, and
they but slightly. I was, in truth, treated somewhat as an object of
suspicion, the cause of which I could not at first imagine. I was
newer to this country and its customs and costumes there a year ago.
Previous to starting for the lake, I had purchased of a firm of
clothiers farther up this street, Poppenheimer and Pappenheimer, a
full outfit for all occasions and sports incident upon a vacation at a
fashionable resort. I had not then learned that one can seldom make a
more fatal mistake than to allow a clothier or tailor to choose for
you. It is true that these gentry have in stock what persons of
refinement demand, but they also have fabrics and garments bizarre in
color and cut, in which they revel and carry for apparently no other
reason than the delectation of their own perverted taste, since they
seldom or never sell them. But at times they light upon some one whose
ignorance or easy-going disposition makes him a prey, and they send
him forth an example of what they call a well-dressed man. More
execrably dressed men than Poppenheimer and Pappenheimer and most of
the other parties in the clothing business, are seldom to be found in
other walks of life. In my ignorance of American customs, I entrusted
myself to their hands with the result that my garments were
exaggerated in pattern and style and altogether unsuited to my dark
complexion and slim figure. But in the wearing of these garments I
a