But just wait till you get the clothes and the idea of cheapness goes like dew under a July sun. All there is cheap in the transaction is the suit. The material is very cheap, cheap to the point of flimsiness, and the making—heaven help you—it is thrown together. There are no stays to the pockets, no reinforcing to the seat, no leather on the inside of the bottoms of the trowsers, and the linings of the coat and vest, or waistcoat, as these semi-barbarians call it, are of the cheapest and flimsiest material that a devilish ingenuity can weave. The suit cannot possibly wear a month and look decent.
But the worst is yet to come. You try it on. We will suppose the coat to be a single-breasted frock. You are immediately astonished at the liberality of your tailor in the matter of cloth, for when you draw the lapels together you find yourself able to button the right hand one on the left hand shoulder.
“Too much cloth in front,” you remark.
“I thought you wanted an easy fit!” the villain answers without a blush.
“So I did, but I did not want all the cloth in your shop.”
Then comes an animated discussion. You insist that it never has been your habit to go about in a sack, that you prefer not to appear habited in a bag. The tailor stands off a foot or two, and admits that while it is perhaps “a trifle easy,” it is still a proper garment and quite in the mode. But if you prefer he will alter it. Prefer! why it will fit Daniel Lambert. It is twice too large for you and of course it must be altered. Then he takes French chalk, and makes a lot of marks on it and you leave it. In a few days he sends it to you altered. You put it on, and commence swearing if you are a profane man, and objurgating, if you are not. I objurgated. For the trowsers hang about your legs like bags, the waistcoat climbs up the back of your neck to the ears, the coat is loose where it should fit closely, it is tight where it should be easy, the skirts hang about you awkwardly, it is angular, stiff and awkward, and yet it comes so near to being a garment that you are compelled to take it, especially, as, following the advice of the infernal tourist who said to you to take only one suit with you, you must have it at once. And so you put it on, and go out into the street, feeling as though you were an object to be stared at, and blighted. You bear not only the burden of physical discomfort, for a misfit is always uncomfortable, but have the consciousness that you are badly dressed, and that every bad point in your physical make-up, is made still more conspicuous by the lack of skill in a tailor.
THE MIX IN CLOTHES.
The only comfort you have is that everybody else is just as badly apparelled. Your American friends know at a glance that it is not your fault, but that you have passed under the blighting shears of an English tailor, and your English friends are all in the same fix. But then they enjoy bad clothes, never having had any other.
There were four Americans in one house in London who each ordered a suit of clothes of one tailor at one time. The four suits came home Saturday evening, and were all tried on Sunday morning. One was tall and slender, another short and stout, the third was dumpy, and the fourth was medium in height and breadth.