lined up with those of
Governor Montague of Virginia, for impartial presentation by a
flashlight photograph. It was an astonishing revelation of Democracy
below the waist line. Jim cut it out and put it in a pretty straw frame.
He said he never wanted me to lose sight of the styles set by great
statesmen. Montague, as became his aristocratic name and lineage, was a
model of perfection about the legs, and Jim said it proved he would
never get to Washington and take rank with our great men. Cleveland and
Hill, however, who had been there, evidently pinned their trousers in
curl-papers, so that they were always ready to look fancy in society and
be snap-shotted. Mine followed the Washington route without urging.
Then, as to vest, coat and shirts: no tailor could make a coat for me
that could trail after my neck when it was engaged in the throes of a
society conversation. The coat had to go off at the back of the collar
and stand to one side until the neck was through talking. The vest
generally showed only two square inches and gave little trouble to the
public, so long as I kept my coat on and hid the safety-pins which
reefed it in the back. The shirt, up to a certain course of the dinner,
would keep under the napkin, but until I learned of a patent mixture to
cover the bosom with a transparent waterproofing, used to protect
wall-paper and other delicate fabrics from ink stains and finger-marks,
I found it a burden to carry so much exposed linen. But with this wax
paint, I care not what drops on it; it won't stick unless it's hot
metal, and there is not so much of that in the air at dinners this side
of Arizona.

Studs are a source of mortification to me. I have paid as high as fifty
cents for a set of three and had them all break off the first night,
exposing the brass settings. I sought to reduce this torment by wearing
only one stud-hole, but that makes it necessary to go away into a far
country, three times during the dinner, to bore out the stump of the old
stud and drive in the new. Any man who has done the job with his collar
and tie on, knows that he is as pop-eyed as a lobster when he gets
through, trying to keep the field of operations in view. I had special
bolts made which I had soldered on. This is practicable where the wax
paint is used and the mangle of the laundry avoided. A good paint will
last three years.

Shaving for society appearances cut windfalls all over my face, that I
had to cover with the ov