My English riding pants would never ride me again.
In using the shears he had made a fatal slip and had irreparably
damaged them in an essential location. However, he said I need
not worry, because it might have been worse; from what he had
already cut out of them he had garnered enough material to make
me a neat outing coat, and by scrimping he thought he might get a
waistcoat to match.
I have my English raincoat; it is still in a virgin state so far
as wearing it is concerned. I may yet wear it and I may not. If
I wear it and you meet me on the street - and we are strangers - you
should experience no great difficulty in recognizing me. Just
start in at almost any spot on the outer orbit and walk round and
round as though you were circling a sideshow tent looking for a
chance to crawl under the canvas and see the curiosities for
nothing; and after a while, if you keep on walking as directed,
you will come to a person with a plain but subsantial face, and
that will be me in my new English raincoat. Then again I may wear
it to a fancy-dress ball sometime. In that case I shall stencil
Pike's Peak or Bust! on the sidebreadth and go as a prairie schooner.
If I can succeed in training a Missouri hound-dog to trail along
immediately behind me the illusion will be perfect.
After these two experiences with the English tailor I gave up.
Instead of trying to wear the apparel of the foreigner I set myself
to the study of it. I would avoid falling into the habit of making
comparisons between European institutions and American institutions
that are forever favorable to the American side of the argument.
To my way of thinking there is oniy one class of tourist-Americans
to be encountered abroad worse than the class who go into hysterical
rapture over everything they see merely because it is European,
and that is the class who condemn offhand everything they see and
find fault with everything merely because it is not American. But
I must say that in the matter of outer habiliments the American
man wins the decision on points nearly every whack.
In his evening garb, which generally fits him, but which generally
is not pressed as to trouserlegs and coatsleeves, the Englishman
makes anexceedingly good appearance. The swallow-tailed coat was
created for the Englishman andhe for it; but on all other occasions
the well-dressed American leads him - leads the world, for that
matter. When a Frenchman attires himself in his fanciest regalia
he merely succeeds in looking effeminate; whereas a German, under
similar circumstances, bears a wadded-in, bulged-out, stuffed-up
appearance.
