Now that I thought of it, what was
the especial virtue of being a plain citizen?
When I came to reflect on the matter further, I realized that my
programme for the past fifteen years has been to put on a plain
pepper-and-salt suit of modest demeanor in the morning, eat two
plain-boiled eggs for breakfast, walk down town in a plain black
overcoat to my office in a plain-looking building, where I pursue my
calling until it is time to go home and doff my pepper-and-salt of
modest demeanor for a plain suit of sables, the funereal dress-clothes
of commerce and convention. Even this coal-black tribute to ceremony
has discredited me with some, who argue that I am not a plain man
because I do not prefer to dine in the same old pepper-and-salt.
Verily the only bits of warm color in my wardrobe have been a
robin's-egg-blue neck-tie, which I have never dared to wear except once
at a wedding, and a pair of pajamas reserved for very occasional jaunts
on yachts and sleeping cars. And now that I had the doctor's orders to
take more exercise, I had been on the point of selecting an ordinary,
plain, pepper-and-salt flannel shirt, and condemning one of my oldest
and plainest pairs of pepper-and-salt trousers for the purpose.
And yet it was not always so. I remember that when I was a young
fellow and a bachelor I used to be, if not a dandy exactly, very
particular regarding my personal appearance, and that I was willing to
approach the border line of gaudiness as closely as any of my
contemporaries.
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