An experiment in gyro-hats

by Ellis Parker Butler

When I had completed this gyro-hat I showed it to my wife, and briefly explained what it was and what I meant to do with it. The small but wonderfully powerful motor and the gyroscope itself were all concealed inside the hat, and I explained to my wife that Walsingham Gribbs need but fasten the hat firmly on his head and he would never stagger again. At first my wife seemed doubtful, but as I went on she became enthusiastic.

The only thing she disliked was the method of fastening the hat to the head, for, as it was quite necessary that the hat be very firmly fixed to the head, I had sewed ear tabs to the hat, and these I tied firmly under my chin. My wife said she feared it would require some time to persuade the public to take to silk hats with ear tabs, and that the sight of a man in a silk hat with ear tabs would be a sign that he was a staggerer. She wanted another method of holding the hat on the head.

“Vacuum suction,” I said, for I am quick to catch an idea. A man has to be, in the hat business. “But,” I added, “where would you get the vacuum? A man cannot be expected to carry a can of vacuum, or whatever he would need to carry vacuum in, around with him; especially the kind of man that would need the gyro-hat.”

“‘MY DEAR,’ SAID MY WIFE, ‘I HAVE IT. LET THE HAT MAKE ITS OWN VACUUM.’”

“My dear,” said my wife, after a minute of thought, during which we both studied the gyro-hat, “I have it! Let the hat make its own vacuum. If the hat is lined with air-tight aluminum, and has a rubber sweat band, and an expulsion valve, the gyroscope motor could pump the air out itself. It could create its own vacuum.”

“Of course it could!” I exclaimed. “I could rig it up so that putting the hat on the head would start the gyroscope, and the gyroscope would pump a vacuum. All any staggerer would need to do would be to put on his hat, and the hat would do the rest. It would stay on his head and it would keep him evenly on his keel.” (Of course I would not use a nautical term like “keel” in my hat shop, but at home I allow myself some liberties of that sort.)

I set to work at once to perfect the gyro-hat on the plan suggested by my wife and in a few days I was able to say it was a success. By this I mean it was a success in so far as the eye could judge by looking at the hat, and all that was needed was a practical trial.

As the hat had been invented for Walsingham Gribbs more than for any other man, I proposed to my wife that Walsingham—we had spoken of him so often that we now mentioned him as Walsingham—should be the man to try it out. But my wife is better posted in social matters than I, and she said it would not do at all to attempt such a thing.

In the first place, none of us knew Walsingham; and in all the other places, it would be insulting to suggest such a thing to him, and might ruin Anne’s chances. I then assured my wife that I did not mean to allow any ordinary intoxicated man to experiment with the only gyro-hat I possessed, and possibly wreck and ruin it. We had too much at stake for that. So, after considerable discussion, my wife and I decided upon what was, after all, the only rational course—I should try out the gyro-hat myself.