There, In The
Open Air, Buyer And Seller Will Chaffer And Bicker, And Wrangle
And Quarrel, And Kiss And Make
Up again - for all the world to see.
One of the free sights of Paris is a frugal Frenchman, with
His
face extensively haired over, pawing like a Skye terrier through a
heap of marked-down lingerie; picking out things for the female
members of his household to wear - now testing some material with
his tongue; now holding a most personal article up in the sunlight
to examine the fabric - while the wife stands humbly, dumbly by,
waiting for him to complete his selections. So far as London was
concerned, I decided to deny myself any extensive orgy in
haberdashery. From similar motives I did not invest in the lounge
suit to which an Englishman is addicted. I doubted whether it
would fit the lounge we have at home - though, with stretching, it
might, at that. My choice finally fell on an English raincoat and
a pair of those baggy knee breeches such as an Englishman wears
when he goes to Scotland for the moor shooting, or to the National
Gallery, or any other damp, misty, rheumatic place.
I got the raincoat first. It was built to my measure; at least
that was the understanding; but you give an English tailor an inch
and he takes an ell. This particular tailor seemed to labor under
the impression that I was going to use my raincoat for holding
large public assemblies or social gatherings in - nothing that I
could say convinced him that I desired it for individual use; so
he modeled it on a generous spreading design, big at the bottom
and sloping up toward the top like a pagoda.
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