As soon as possible after his arrival in town, my clerical friend broached the all-important subject of the tailor, to one of his brothers, a youth of unquestionable authority in such matters, and invoked his assistance.
"With all my heart, Will, we'll drop in at my own place, as we go down this morning; they get everything up there artistically." "And at artistic prices, I fear," soliloquized the new candidate for the honors of the cloth, with a slight quaking at heart, as a long-cherished plan for adding, without her previous knowledge, a shawl to the waning bridal outfit of his self-sacrificing wife, rose before his mental vision.
"But, I say, Will," inquired his modish brother, of our young clergyman, in a tone of good-humored banter, as they sauntered down Broadway together, after breakfast, "where did you buy your new chapeau?"
"At A——, before leaving home"——
"Excuse me, my dear fellow, but it's a nondescript! It will never do with your new suit, allow me to say, frankly."
"But the person of whom I bought it had just returned from New York, and he assured me it was the latest fashion! I gave him eight dollars for it, at any rate."
"Preposterous!" ejaculated the man of fashion, in a tone portentous as that which ushered in the "prodigious" of Dominie Sampson, when astounded by his discoveries in the mysteries of the toilet. "It first saw the light in the 'rural districts,' depend on't!"
The quizzical glances with which his companion ever and anon scrutinized the crowning glory of his neat morning attire, as he had previously thought it, gradually overpowered the philosophy of my friend,—clergyman though he was—the admitted Adonis of his class in college, and the favorite of ladies, old and young. The church's
——"favorites are but men.
And who e'er felt the stoic when
First conscious of"——
wearing a "shocking bad hat!" The result was, that the condemned article was exchanged at a fashionable establishment for one fully meeting the approbation of the modish critic.