Part 8

Finally we made our escape--we pleaded illness or a twisted ankle or something of that sort. We hurried home and as soon as we got there we pitched that suit out of the window. It caught in the branches of a tree where it stayed till the family made us get a ladder and take it down--they said it gave the public the idea that the gentlemen in the house ran around without any clothes on.

We never did wear it again. The very next day we went out and bought a set of open-faced formal clothes. For months afterwards we wouldn't go out for a walk in the evening without them. We didn't feel safe. Mere clothes might be all right for millionaires and geniuses, but sumptuous raiment for ours! We couldn't afford to wear less.

*That Fur Coat*

Ever since our downy and callow youth the fur-lined overcoat has been for us a symbol of wealth and a certain dashing deviltry. Of course, we are perfectly well aware that a number of tame married men, holding positions worth about twenty dollars a week, own fur-lined coats. Even on the editorial staff of which we are the bright particular star there are two or three overcoats lined with something definitely recognizable as fur.

Nevertheless we have never been able to conquer our instinctive feeling that a fur-lined overcoat indicates the possession of a great deal of money and a doggish tendency to spend it on wine, women, and--well, the singing is not so important in the picture. Whenever we see a man sporting a fur-lined overcoat our first thought is to wonder whether or not his wife has found out about him. Our second is to wish we had a coat like it.

The origin of this curious and somewhat pathetic feeling about fur-lined coats is probably to be found in the days of our adolescence, when we wore deliriously exotic ties and attended the presentations of refined melodrama. We devoted much thought in those days to the subject of masculine attire--possibly with some obscure notion of attracting the weaker sex by the brilliancy of our plumage--and the villain always fascinated while he revolted us. We had much joy of his clothes.

To see the handsome devil swing across the stage with his light but fiendish ha-ha, his cigarette, and the dress-suit which is the national costume of villains, always gave us a thrill which the chaste embraces of the hero and heroine seldom provided. Even to this day we wouldn't give a darn to watch some other fellow hugging a comely young woman.

Usually the villain wore a fur-lined coat at some stage of his hellish machinations--preferably at the height of them, when he was about to boil the heroine's baby, for instance, or was engaged in tying that long-suffering and virtuous lady in the path of the onrushing train. It was at such moments that he threw open the coat loaned by the well-known firm of local furriers--as the programme never forgot to state--and displayed the mink lining of luxurious sin. We always wondered how the heroine found the strength of mind to resist his wicked advances to her.

Incidentally, we noticed that no matter what liberties the hero might take with the person of the villain--the hero was usually a muscular blond--he always forebore to lay the hands of avenging justice on the fur-lined coat. He might pitch the tr-r-raitor-r off a cliff, or slowly choke him to death after a furious grapple, or shoot him in the nick of time and the chest, but never with the coat on. If the villain forgot to take it off, the hero always taunted him into doing so. Whereupon the villain, knowing full well that he had come to the end of his evil tether, either hung the coat carefully on a handy hook or folded it neatly on a chair. The owner might be down in the orchestra seats.

Such scenes bred in us a superstitious reverence for fur-lined garments. It became the dream of our young life to possess such an overcoat, a gold cigarette-case, and three or four wives whom we had married for their money. But you know how disappointing these dreams are apt to be. We didn't even get the wives.

The nearest we ever came to a fur-lined coat was owning one with a Persian-lamb collar. We never cared much for that coat. There was an air of superficiality about it. Not that we have anything against Persian-lamb collars so far as they go. But they don't go very far. Besides, they make one look like a police-lieutenant or a chauffeur.

Mind you, it was a swagger garment in its way. In addition to the fur collar it had a double-breasted front, and was fastened with barrel-shaped arrangements instead of buttons. It had everything pertaining to a fur-lined coat, except the fur-lining.

Of course, you wouldn't notice that vital defect unless we opened the coat or took it off. And we never did either in public. We have sat in street-cars up near the stove with that coat buttoned up to our chin, until people have moved away from us under the impression that we had the measles. We have almost had to thrash butlers to prevent them helping us off with it--if there is anything obstinate on earth, it is a butler with the idea that you are hiding something from him. We have even retired into dark doorways to get a cent out of our pants-pocket to buy a paper, rather than open the coat on a busy corner.

In spite of these precautions, we always had the feeling that people knew about that coat and discussed it. They had a way of looking at it as though they thought the collar had been put on with safety-pins. We grew to hate the coat. Finally the moths got it. That is, they bored holes in it--probably looking for the lining.

Still our thwarted ambition to possess a real fur-lined coat has persisted. We want it as badly as we ever did. It is nothing to us that they have gone out of exclusive style. We care not that every second man on the street has a coat with some sort of hairy stuff on the collar and the interior draped with the mortal remains of the commoner sort of muskrat. We are still faithful to our early love.

From time to time we have gone into one or other of the various local emporiums--or should it be "emporia?"--of skins, peltry, fleece, hides, and fur, and have priced the garment of our longing. We have looked at mink-lined ones, rat-lined, rabbit-lined, and even seal-lined. We have tried them on and talked sagely to salesmen about them. But we have bought not, neither have we paid down in instalments. We have sighed, jingled the quarter against the small change in our pocket, and said we would call again soon.

The trouble is that the only coats we like are those ranging from about four hundred up--up as far as you can see, and then some! The seal ones we definitely gave up. No one but a former manufacturer of munitions or an inventor of booze-substitutes should aspire to those. It isn't only the initial expense but the way you have to live up to them--taxicabs, diamonds, and half a dollar to the hat-boy every time he helps you on with it.

That left mink, and mink we resolved it should be, in spite of its scarcity. You see, the mink is a small animal of retiring nature and celibate instincts. At least, the mink does not seem to run to large families. The rabbit takes up fatherhood as a profession--but nothing like that for the mink! One or two little minks, and that's all. The mink is a sort of natural Eugenist. "Better babies" is his slogan, not "More babies." As a result minks are hard to get, and correspondingly expensive.

Frequently have we cast eyes of longing on mink-lined coats in fur-store windows, as we strolled along to the office on cold mornings in our combination raincoat and winter ulster. They have been handsome coats, too, many of them, but there has always been something about them we didn't like--sometimes the collar, occasionally the shell (how those military terms will creep in even yet!), and nearly always the small tag hanging from the upper righthand button-hole and proclaiming the price.

But one fine day during that very cold snap we finally saw the fur-coat of our youthful vision. There it hung, or rather stood, in the window, spreading its mink lining to the ravished gaze and ruffling its otter collar in tantalizing beauty. That collar had been peeled off the emperor of all the otters--or the crown prince, at the very least--and Heaven alone knows how many minks had delivered up their fluffy integument to furnish forth that sumptuous lining.

It was a beautiful thing, God wot, and the price was right--only two hundred and fifty iron men, simoleons, bucks, bones, or spondulicks. Not that we take a light view of a sum which in the old days would have bought two thousand cocktails, and if judiciously expended on "lush" would have enabled one to laugh at Prohibition for many happy weeks. But what is two hundred and fifty dollars for a fur-coat which was originally five hundred as the tag explicitly declared, and had come down through successive stages to this absurdly inadequate figure?

We rushed right in and made a clerk drag it out of the window. He did it a little doubtfully, it seemed--evidently unaware how many moneyed men dress very plainly, not to say shabbily. But our enthusiasm finally impressed him. He held it up for us, and we slipped with a sigh of tremulous delight into its soothing embrace. Lordy, how that coat fitted! How gently it caressed us, and how gracefully it hung upon the angles of our frame! There is something positively sinful in such comfort as that.

Of course, it wouldn't do to let the clerk see how delighted we were with it--he might raise the price again. So we controlled our voice as best we could, and asked him if the skins were all right. We even tried to look disparaging.

"All right?" he almost shouted. "Why, if it wasn't for the stringency and all that, this coat would be selling at three times--but you can see for yourself. Just look at those skins--everyone of them taken in the middle of winter!" And in his indignation at our attitude, he grabbed a couple of minks and crumpled them up as if he were going to tear them out of the coat and throw them away.

That's a peculiar thing about fine furs. The finer they are, the more the connoisseur seems to abuse them. Poor skins have to be handled with great care, we presume, but when your real expert gets hold of a good piece of fur, he shakes it and beats it and tries to pull the hair out of it.

It was also very nice to know that the minks had been taken in the winter when they had all their fur on. In the summer, when the minks are wearing nothing but their swimming-trunks, so to speak--but the thing doesn't bear thinking of.

It was just the coat we had always wanted--the clerk said we looked great in it--but after a hasty recollection of our bank-balance as it appeared when we last put a dint in it, we told him we would call again. And we kept calling. We called about a dozen times. We simply couldn't keep away from that fur-coat. And every time we went we brought a friend or two with us to look it over and give us advice. We put the coat on and walked around the store in it to show how it hung, and then we took it off and adjourned to the nearest cigar-stand or blind-pig to discuss the matter. The coat cost us about twenty dollars in a couple of weeks.

Our friends all admired the coat, but curiously enough, they all advised against us buying it--perhaps from a conscientious objection to seeing so much money tied up in mere fur. They always warned us that if we once wore it, we'd have to go on wearing it all the time for fear of catching cold. They said that's the worst of fur-coats--one doesn't dare leave them off. But naturally, if we got that coat, we intended to go on wearing it till about the middle of June. When it got too hot to wear it open, we'd carry it on our arm with the lining turned out.

Lately the clerk had been getting quite sniffy. The last time we were in, he intimated that the coat was beginning to look rather used from being worn around the store so much. We finally had to discontinue these visits, but we hated to tear ourself away from that glorious garment. The first thing we knew some butcher might buy it.

But perhaps some rich relative of ours, turning up rather unexpectedly--we don't insist on any close consanguinity so long as he is rich--may see this pathetic screed and feel that here is a chance to help genius in distress. What's the use of erecting monuments to us after we are dead? How much better and kinder it would be to buy that coat and send it down to the office while we are still comparatively alive. In fact, this is our idea in writing this article.

*Spring in the City*

A thick, creamy, white lather covering that part of our countenance which indicates strength of character, showed that we were about to shave. It is our matutinal custom. Poised in our hand was the lethal weapon with which we perform this painful rite.

At that moment we heard the robin! At that very instant of the morning of Saturday, April the sixth, the voice of the robin was heard in the block. Immediately we threw up the window, and careless of the rather intimate nature of our habiliments, we leaned out over the ledge.

There was no robin in sight. No glimpse of red-breast gladdened our heart. We looked in vain at each of the miniature plots of mud which residents on our street refer to as the "lawn." Nowhere could we see Cock Robin sturdily dragging a large, thick worm from his lair, or waiting with dignified alertness for breakfast to poke up its head. But his voice filled the street, clear and high and vibrant with delight--the very voice of triumphant spring!

"Some class to that whistlin'," said someone below us.

We looked down and saw a dingy man with a bag of tools on his shoulder, who was frankly watching us and grinning with disgusting familiarity. Plumbers never are in a hurry.

"Makes a fella feel like chuckin' his work, don't it?" he persisted.

"It does," we burbled through the lather, and drew in our head with reckless haste. We afterwards discovered some of our back-hair still clinging to the lower edge of the window-frame. But not even the painful presence of a protuberance on our skull where none had been before could banish our joy in that robin's song.

Spring was here at last! It is true there was still much ice in our backyard, and in our neighbor's backyard, and in the backyard beyond his. It is true also that icicles hung from the roofs, and that the water in our bath-tub was still of a temperature to produce curiously mottled effects on our general complexion. But we were happy and we sang as we splashed about, for we knew that spring was here.

Therefore did we kick into a corner with joyous abandon the thick, fuzzy garments--warranted pure wool and unshrinkable (base deception!)--with which we had armed ourself as with triple brass against the onslaught of old Boreas. And from a camphored recess in our trunk we drew forth tenuous and elastic vesture which clung to our manly form and restored to it its summer slimness.

When the coal-man's bill arrived in the morning mail, we threw it carelessly aside for our landlady. Our attitude towards coal-men had suddenly changed from anxious propitiation to bored indifference. The strike news in the papers moved not our Olympian serenity. We sympathized with the miners. We felt that if we were a miner ourself, we would strike at once and stay struck till the dog-days caused us to long for subterranean coolness.

Then draping our light overcoat in a jaunty way over our arm, we walked down town. It wasn't a case of going out with the avowed intention of walking, and then sprinting after the first street-car we saw. No, we really walked, inhaling large breaths of vernal ozone. And a lot of other men were similarly engaged. Fellows that we used to see morning after morning furtively slipping into a street-car--the same car that we slipped into ourself--now swung along with their chests swelling out of their coats and a good-to-be-alive expression on their faces. We also noticed that they seemed to take more than the normal masculine interest in the spring dresses which flitted by--especially those affectionate gowns which cling so alluringly to their fair owners. Verily it was the spring.

In a bit of ground where the mud had been pounded to the shiny consistency of overdone chocolate blanc-mange, three very dirty and very serious-minded urchins played marbles. Further on a spoiled darling of fortune who possessed a top spun it with studied indifference--and with a cord, too, of course--while a couple of other youngsters less favored of the gods looked enviously on.

A garden patch littered with sticks and wet leaves and the water-logged aftermath of winter held a resolute little old man with an immense rake, who was endeavoring to introduce some order into his chaotic cosmos. He was having a very busy time, something like a pup who had got into a boneyard. He scratched and tugged and grunted, and here and there he managed to get the stuff gathered into piles. He may have had some notion of burning it, but it would take many sunny days before the stuff would be dry enough to burn anywhere but in a very hot and active volcano.

We leaned on the fence and sniffed the moist rich odors of the dead leaves. They brought to mind pleasant pictures of the approaching time of planting, when enthusiastic amateurs, heedless of the mud on the knees of their trousers, would be jabbing holes in every available bit of ground and sticking seeds and bulbs into them. And we reflected sadly on the sardonic humor of fate which had made us a book-reviewer instead of a happy farmer lad carolling to the sun as we went about the simple and healthful duties of our husbandry. We thought of striding out to the fields with the sun turning the frosted grass to silver filigree, and then we noticed that the old gentleman was contemplating us with the cold and wary eye of a disillusioned sparrow.

"Are you looking for work, young man?" he asked, "or are you merely looking at it? Because, if you really want a job, there is one right here that I would like...."

But we were already on our way. We suddenly recalled that the mail must be piled up on our desk, and that our presence was urgently needed at the office. Did we want work? And so in an instant we were brought back from the golden meadows of dreamland, where we saw ourself wandering a flushed young god in the morning of the world, and became once more a middle-aged office-man, somewhat stooped from bending over a desk.

The spring was in our blood, however, and our spirits revived at the first park we came to. On such mornings one makes a point of walking through the parks, and Allen Gardens lay right on our line of march. They were a scene of joyous activity. Chief gardeners and assistant and deputy-assistant gardeners ran about in amiable confusion. There was a tremendous raking up of straw and mulch--mulch being the technical name for everything that is thrown on a flower-bed, from bricks to sardine-tins.

Around the fountain a lot of blithesome little toddlers pulled one another's hair, or made frantic efforts to drown themselves, while the nurse-girls exchanged confidences as to the precise tone in which "he said" and the elegant vivacity with which "I said to him."

The benches were out and they were occupied. Perhaps it is enough to say that the benches were out. They are never left unoccupied on a nice day of spring. Gentlemen of shabby leisure abhor a vacant seat. One is led to wonder where the men who sit in parks go during the winter--into cracks in the wall, possibly, like the flies. But the day was warm and the bench-boarders were out. There they sat blinking their eyes in drowsy contentment and sniffing hopefully the breezes of spring.

We paused to make some of the kindly and philosophic reflections which are dictated to us on such occasions by our whimsical genius. We looked about us with just such a keen and humorous expression as we felt Montaigne would have worn under similar circumstances. We were preparing to say something rather clever to ourself about the life of man, which is as a spring day, etc.

"Well, the long winter is over at last," said a voice at our elbow, or rather at our left shoulder-blade. It was a melancholy voice, a voice which intimated that the owner doubted he would ever see another spring. But a large face of more than usual redness caused one to question the likelihood of a demise so immediate.

"Yes," we admitted, "it seems to be over, and it is about time."

"Ah, the spring is a great season for them as is young and strong and handsome."

The wistful expression with which this battered, red-faced, watery-eyed person regarded us indicated that he thought we were all these things. We blushed slightly, and to hide our embarrassment--we are not used to such compliments, implied or otherwise--said in a voice of great heartiness:

"Ho, yes--nothing like the spring! Makes a fellow glad to be alive."

"Yes, yes," he agreed still more wistfully, "it makes a handsome young gentleman's heart expand--it makes him free-handed and generous." A sudden cold suspicion seized our vernal ardor and strangled it. Could it be possible that ... yes, it could! And that rubicund old scoundrel proceeded to inform us that the "temporary loan--(the printer will please emphasize temporary")--of half a dollar would cause him to recall our memory with gratitude at frequent intervals for the rest of his life.

If we had had half a dollar in our pocket, we might ... but what man who is paid on Saturdays ever had any money to bring down to the office Saturday morning? We hinted discreetly at our destitution, but the red-faced man merely grunted and turned away. We fear he did not believe us.

We regretted his distrust, of course, but, as Emerson might have said, it is great to be misunderstood in the spring. In a few minutes we forgot our embarrassment and remembered the ruddy one merely as a humorous episode of the jovial day. We chuckled all the way down to the office as we thought of the open and unabashed admiration with which he had regarded us, till he discovered that we were a good Samaritan without the price.

At the office everybody was glad to see us. Even the Managing Editor was amiable. He said nothing about the hour we got in--he seemed to think it was very nice of us to come down at all. And then he sat on the corner of our desk and talked about the beauty of living in the country, and waking up in the morning with the calves bleating around you and the hens and all that, and walking out in the fields to see the fine, healthy farmer lads turning up the sod and reaping and harrowing and everything.

Of course, it was immediately obvious to us that the Managing Editor's idea of country life had been gained from the reading of sentimental verse. Unfortunately, we find it difficult to share this enthusiasm for rural life. You see, we worked on a few farms when we were a wild lad just out of college--we were seeking inspiration in the soil. So we know just how a farm looks and smells in the spring when they are enriching the ground. But we didn't disillusion the M.E.--we wanted everyone to be happy.

* * * * *

It is true that winter rose again Sunday morning. It is true that Monday was cold and blustery, that there was a thick covering of snow on the ground Tuesday morning, that we had to get out our woollens once more, that in the interval we caught a cold in the head. We knew it, but we heeded not. Our eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the spring.

*Moving Day*