“I don’t wish to flatter you, but it is
about all I can do to understand you now.”
That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on
the pleasantest terms directly—I use the
word in the English sense.
[Later—1882. Esthetes in many of
our schools are now beginning to teach the pupils
to broaden the ‘a,’ and to say “don’t
you,” in the elegant foreign way.]
This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town
of -----, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile. His stepfather
had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged; and so
he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us. He came in
every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene human
curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to look
at my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought he would
notice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respect me
accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion,
pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently
arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. Said he
would send me the address of his hatter. Then he said, “Pardon me,” and
proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched the
edges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the
manufacturer’s name. He said, “No one will know now where you got it.
I will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it over this
tissue circle.” It was the calmest, coolest thing—I never admired a man
so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat sat offensively
near our noses, on the table—an ancient extinguisher of the “slouch”
pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by vicissitudes of the
weather, and banded by an equator of bear’s grease that had stewed
through.
Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors,
for over my tailor’s door was the legend, “By
Special Appointment Tailor to H. R. H. the Prince
of Wales,” etc. I did not know at
the time that the most of the tailor shops had the
same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine tailors
to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty
to make a prince. He was full of compassion
for my coat. Wrote down the address of his tailor
for me. Did not tell me to mention my nom de
plume and the tailor would put his best work on my
garment, as complimentary people sometimes do, but
said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an
unknown person (unknown person, when I thought I was
so celebrated in England!—that was the
cruelest cut), but cautioned me to mention his name,
and it would be all right. Thinking to be facetious,
I said:
“But he might sit up all night and injure his
health.”
“Well, let him,” said Rogers; “I’ve
done enough for him, for him to show some appreciation
of it.”
