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.
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