While we stood waiting for a street-car—we felt as though we had been waiting several hours—hot blushes coursed over us from head to foot. The perspiration fairly sizzled on our cheeks. We couldn't have felt hotter in a coon coat.
As the car bore down upon us, we noticed that the motorman kept his eye fixed on us with withering contempt. He fairly snorted with indignation as he applied the air-brake. We put it down to jealousy. He was wearing one of those nice serge suits, blue and shiny, made of cloth weighing half a pound to the square foot, and bound with leather at the wrists, as is popular in municipal-traction circles. A coat like that is about as pervious to air as a zinc roof. We tried to persuade ourself that he envied us.
The conductor, while he held out the box for our yellow ticket—no, we didn't choose it to match the suit—studied us as though we were a new and exotic specimen at the local zoo. Then he went up to the front of the car, and as he went the motorman turned halfway round and said in a stage-whisper that carried easily the full length of the car: "Fer gawd's sake, did yuh see what got on?" Then they talked seriously together for a moment or two. They seemed to be considering whether or not they ought to throw us off. It was very difficult to look unconcerned, but we tried.
There are many painful recollections connected with that day. We bore up against the flood of contumely and ridicule as best we could. But in the end it was too much for us. We passed a group of boys on a street-corner. We had passed several such groups during the day, and had been obliged to listen to many personal remarks of a vulgar character utterly lacking in true wit. As we went past this last group the usual derisive comments were made, but we neither slackened nor hastened our stately progress. Then in the midst of them a shrill voice suddenly piped up: "Oh, you Votes-for-Women!"
It was too much. Our cup was full—in fact, it was sloshing over our anguished soul. We hurried home and tore the suit off, and were only prevented by fear of our landlady from burning it in the corner of our room. We never wore it again.
As we pointed out before, however, the public attitude towards garments of this sort has changed very considerably in the past few years. A man may now clothe himself like the lily—the orange lily, that is—without causing people on the street to suspect him of being a poet or a professional fox-trotter. Think of the vogue of the Palm Beach suit in the past few years!—which reminds us.
We were sitting in the office the other day—a real sizzler, too!—with the door locked for protection and most of our clothes piled up on the extra chair. Oh, it's all right. We had arranged with the office-boy to ring a bell when he saw anyone coming towards our door, so we could put some of them on again.
Well, we had hastily scrambled into our coat and an expression of alert dignity when a fat man was ushered in. He is a friend of ours who had dropped in to show us a nice new Palm-Beach suit he had bought for ten dollars and a quarter the day before—heaven alone knows what the quarter was for! In fact, at the first glance we wondered what the ten dollars was for.
To be perfectly frank—always an interesting and perilous endeavor—we took a scunner against that suit. In the first place it was so darn baggy; and then the color! It hung on him in folds like an elephant's skin—a light tan elephant who had been crossed in love. We wouldn't wear a suit like that—not, if we had to go around in our pyjamas. But naturally we didn't tell him so—there is such a thing as tact. We said all we could for the suit. We remarked that there seemed to be a good deal of cloth in it for the money, and it would be a nice invisible shade for sitting around the beach in the evening. Even the sand-flies would hardly be able to find him.
If we had let the matter rest right there, we would have been all right. He wasn't flattered exactly, but he was satisfied. Unfortunately, in our desire for information, we asked him if the waiters in the better-class restaurants made any objection to serving him.