is intelligence the value of
something with whose merits possibly he is not acquainted.

There are not many things in life, I think, which you find pleasanter
than this: You are slightly obstructed in your perambulations on a fine
afternoon by a small knot of loiterers pausing before a shop window in
which an active young man of admirably mobile countenance is holding
forth in dumb show. Your progress is slackened as you edge about the
throng with the intention of proceeding on your way. As it were, you
poise on the wing. Then, like a warming liquor stealing through the
veins, the awakening of your interest in the artful antics of this
young man makes fainter and fainter your will to proceed on your
course, until it dies softly away. What is this ridiculous thing he is
doing? By its magnetism it has, at any rate, become for you the
supreme interest, for the moment, of the universe.

With a horrible grimace the young man yanks fiercely at his cravat. It
does not budge, or at least only very slightly. With still further
display of energetic effort, accompanied by a ferocious expression of
pained and enraged exasperation, he yanks again. No, the cravat is
stuck fast behind within the collar. With a gesture of hopeless
despair and a face of pitiful woe the young man abandons his struggle
with the ordinary kind of cravat which loops around the neck, and
which, foolishly enough, is so universally worn. You see, so his
eloquent flinging out of the hands saith, it is of no use. He shakes
his fist. Then, registering the extremity of disgust, he rips the
loathesome, cravat-clogged collar from his neck and flings it from him.

What will he do now? is the thought that holds his audience bound in a
spell. Ah! His face breaks into light. He snatches up his collar and
industriously adjusts it without a cravat. He picks up a small object
which he holds aloft between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way
and that. It is the ready-made bow of a bow tie, the bow and nothing
more. Yes, there are patent prongs to it, which he deftly slips
beneath the wings of his collar. So! No trouble whatever.
Instantaneous. A smile of luxurious blandness spreads over the face of
the young man. Thus he stands for a moment. Then stoops and places in
a corner of the window a large card inscribed "Ten Cents." With a
pleasing sense of curiosity satisfied, the current of your own life as
distinct from show-window shows flows back