LLY JOEL, Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN, and others, who,
I daresay, have four or even five, cannot know what it is to feel that
their evening's refreshment and entertainment depend on their finding
the French chalk or the india-rubber.

Therefore I am making no stint in this matter. I am having fifteen
dress-shirts, so that there may be one for wear each day in the week,
seven in the laundry, and one over for emergencies--like _Parsifal_,
that begins in the middle of the afternoon. I mean to be similarly
lavish in the matter of collars and handkerchiefs. The number of the
former which I am buying amounts almost to an epidemic; while the extent
of my commission in the latter is the result of lessons learnt in the
hard school of experience. I say unhesitatingly that the man who tries
to get through life on a mere dozen handkerchiefs is simply begging
for disaster, as, however methodical in their use he may be, a
carelessly-caught cold may any day upset his reckoning and leave him at
a loose end; sometimes scarcely that. Hence I am doing this part of my
trousseau in princely fashion. I am having half a gross of them.

Then there is my slumber-wear. For years I have hungered for silk ones,
but have had no conscientious excuse for appeasing my appetite. To buy
silk pyjamas in cold blood has hitherto seemed to me to be sheer cynical
extravagance; but now I feel that circumstances justify me in my action,
for it would be a very sorry thing for me to encounter a burglar or cope
with a fire clad in apparel that would not be up to the standard of the
rest of my wardrobe.

Now, I am a great believer in dressing for the spirit of the moment;
therefore I have resolved upon a pretty colour-scheme for my night-wear.
My pyjamas are to be of tints conducive to refreshing rest, namely and
severally white, lemon, light pink, and pale green--an idea which I
candidly confess was inspired by the spectacle of a Neapolitan ice. If
you think that this is merely an idle whim, just imagine endeavouring to
sleep in pyjamas patterned like an Axminster carpet or a Scotch tartan.
No wonder _Macbeth_ "murdered sleep" if he was arrayed in garments of
his club-colours!

I have brought the same aesthetic sense to bear upon my choice of ties
and socks: greys and blacks for times of grave political crises; fawn,
buff, pearl, moose--I am not sure that this is a colour, but it sounds
quite possible--for brighter hours; and colours familiar to every
student of s