d I contrast it with the woman, prominent in the theatrical world, who
had been doing a little dusting--yes, they do, but it is never
published--before coming to lunch with me. She walked into one of the
largest of the New York hotels, hatted, veiled and sable-ed, and wearing
tied around her waist a large blue-and-white checked gingham apron.

Now I opine (I have stolen that word from Irvin) that under those
circumstances, or something approximating them, such as pajama trousers,
or the neglect to conceal that portion of a shirt not intended for the
public eye, almost any man of my acquaintance would have made a wild
bolt for the nearest bar, hissing like a teakettle. Note: This was
written when the word bar did not mean to forbid or to prohibit. The
gingham-apron lady merely stood up smilingly, took it off and gave it to
the waiter, who being a man returned it later wrapped to look as much
like a club sandwich as possible.

Oh, they're conventional, these men, right enough! Now and then one of
them gathers a certain amount of courage and goes without a hat to save
his hair, or wears sandals to keep his feet cool, and he is immediately
dismissed as mad. I know one very young gentleman who nearly broke up a
juvenile dance by borrowing his mother's pink silk stockings for socks
and wearing her best pink ribbon as a tie.

How many hours do you suppose were wasted by the new army practicing
salutes in front of a mirror? A good many right arms to-day, back in
"civies," have a stuttering fit whenever they approach a uniform. And I
know a number of conventional gentlemen who are suffering hours of
torment because they can't remember, out of uniform, to take off their
hats to the women they meet. War is certainly perdition, isn't it? And
numbers of times during the late unpleasantness I have seen new officers
standing outside a general's door, trying to remember the rule for
addressing a superior, and cap or no cap while not wearing side arms.

You know how a woman would do it. She would give a tilt to her hat and a
pull here and there, and then she would walk in and say:

"I know it's perfectly horrible, but I simply can't remember the
etiquette of this sort of thing. Please do tell me, General."

And the general, who has only eleven hundred things to do before eating
a bite of lunch on the top of his desk, will get up and gravely instruct
her. Which is exactly like a man, of course.

Men overdo etiquette sometimes, beca