novel.
And 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.
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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
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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.
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