Peeps at People

by Robert Cortes Holliday

TO patronize barbers' shops is a trying affair. Nothing but a crying need of services obtained there can drive one who knows them well into one of them. When you enter a barber shop, a long row of barber's chairs, like a line of guns down the deck of a man-o'-war, stretching away in perspective, confronts you. Three barbers, say, are engaged with patrons; and they go calmly on. They are unaware of your existence. The rest have been enjoying newspapers and leisure. You interrupt them; and they spring, as one man, each to the head of his chair, and stand at attention. To find such a company of well-fed, well-groomed, better-men than-you-are suddenly at your service is disturbing; to have to insult all the others in your selection of one is an uncomfortable thought. They are all equally friendly toward you; but it is impossible for them all to shave you; you must turn against some of them. There is no retreat for you; you cannot turn around and go out. You choose the nearest man, as the only solution: and the others show their displeasure by returning to their seats. A fiend is in this man whom you have chosen; his suavity was a diabolical mask. He gloats in publicly humiliating you. He forces you to confess there before his "gang" that you do not want anything but a shave. You have brought this man from his newspaper simply to shave you! Now the number of things the barber manages to do to you against your desire is a measure of the resistant force of your character. You deny that you need a shampoo. There is no denying that your hair is falling out. There is no denying that you sometimes shave yourself. You need try to conceal nothing from this man. He sees quite through you. (You recall a certain Roundabout Paper.) He has Found You Out! All you ask is to be allowed to go. He washes your face for you and turns you out of the chair. You pass into the hands of a boy, the same boy you denied to polish your shoes, a boy that has his opinions, who plays the tune of "Yankee Doodle" on you with a whisk-broom very much as if he snapped his fingers in your face; and you may go.

XVIII
MUCH MARRIED STRATFORD

WHAT an excellent thing it is that Stratford is comfortably married. He is built for marriage. That is the life for him; a nice, quiet, wholesome, unexciting life of home comforts. Mr. and Mrs. Stratford dwell happily in a little nest called a cottage. Here they are surrounded by all the sundry and divers chattels and effects incident to the life they follow.

In order that he may be properly protected against the elements, Stratford is plentifully supplied with overshoes, earbobs, Storm King chest protectors, mufflers, and umbrellas. He arms himself with these instruments according to the precise demand of each different occasion. Going out into the weather is an undertaking, and an adventure, accompanied by hazardous risks. With Stratford, preparation for it is a system and a science. Sometimes, however, Stratford's judgment errs in the matter of precaution. One day last week Stratford went downtown. Yielding to his vanity on that day, he recklessly wore kid gloves instead of his mittens, which were so much more suited to the then prevailing inclement weather. Now he suffers from it. He has a cough, and is compelled to keep his breast goose-greased.

Few people realize the importance of health, and the relation of diet to health. Pork is not wholesome. New potatoes are very hard to digest. Cream should never be eaten with peaches. This pernicious combination curdles. Stratford knows much more about these things than does the writer, which is fortunate for Stratford; the writer has only attempted to point out and warn you against a few of the most important, which he learned from Stratford. Stratford learned all this from experience. Last evening at dinner Stratford drank two cups of coffee. He did not sleep a wink all the night in consequence. Coffee is very bad for the nerves, very bad.

It may be that there are many persons like the writer in not knowing how to serve coffee. The cream should always be put in the cup first, then the coffee poured on. Though you may not be aware of the fact, it absolutely ruins coffee to serve it any other way. It is better to put sugar on oatmeal after the cream is on. The writer does not know why; but it is better.

Though one would hardly suspect it, in his youth Stratford was considerable of a rake. He often tells the story. It appears that in a spirit of reckless dare-deviltry on an occasion Stratford partook of some spirituous liquor. Now Stratford has a tolerably strong head. But this wine—or was it cocktail?—proved almost too much for him. Ah, well! those wild and lawless days are past and gone. Stratford has reformed, and will not fill a drunkard's grave. No one, we hope, respects Stratford the less for having been a little wild. We all hate a milksop, you will agree.