We went up to the composing room just now to consult our privy
counsellor, Peter Augsberger, the make-up man, and after Peter had
told us about his corn----
It is really astonishing, by the way, how many gardeners there are
in a newspaper office. We once worked in a place where a
horticultural magazine and a beautiful journal of rustic life were
published, and the delightful people who edited those magazines were
really men about town; but here in the teeming city and in the very
node of urban affairs, to wit, the composing room, one hears nought
but merry gossip about gardens, and the great and good men by whom
we are surrounded begin their day by gazing tenderly upon jars full
of white iris. And has not our friend Charley Sawyer of the dramatic
department given us a lot of vegetable marrow seeds from his own
garden and greatly embarrassed us by so doing, for he has put them
in two packets marked "Male" and "Female," and to tell the truth we
had no idea that the matter of sex extended even as far as the
apparently placid and unperturbed vegetable marrow. Mr. Sawyer
explained carefully to us just how the seeds ought to be planted,
the males and females in properly wedded couples, we think he said;
but we are not quite sure, and we are too modest to ask him to
explain again; but if we should make a mistake in planting those
seeds, if we were to---- Come, we are getting away from our topic.
Peter had told us about his corn, in his garden, that is, out in
Nutley (and that reminds us of the difficulties of reading poetry
aloud. Mr. Chesterton tells somewhere a story about a poem of
Browning's that he heard read aloud when he was a child, and
understood the poem to say "John scorns ale."
Now Mr. Chesterton--you understand, of course, we are referring to
Gilbert Keith Chesterton--being from his very earliest youth an
avowed partisan of malt liquor, this heresy made an impression upon
his tender cortex, and he never forgot about John, in Browning's
poem, scorning ale. But many years afterward, reading Browning, he
found that the words really were: "John's corns ail," meaning
apparently that John was troubled by pedal callouses.) Peter, we
repeat, and to avoid any further misunderstanding and press
diligently toward our theme, having mentioned his garden, who
should come up to us but Pete Corcoran, also of the composing room
force, and a waggish friend of ours, and gazing on us in a manner
calculated to make us feel ill at ease he said, "I suppose you are
going to write something about that tie of yours."
Now we were wearing a scarf that we are very fond of, the kind of
tie, we believe, that is spoken of as "regimental stripes"; at any
rate, it is designated with broad diagonal bands of colour: claret,
gold, and blue. It was obvious to us that Pete Corcoran, or, to give
him his proper name, Mr. Corcoran, had said what he did merely in a
humorous way, or possibly satiric, implying that we are generally so
hard up for something to write about that we would even undertake so
trifling a subject as haberdashery; but as we went downstairs again
to our kennel, _au dixième_, as Mr. Wanamaker would call it, we
thought seriously about this and decided that we would cause Pete's
light-hearted suggestion to recoil violently upon his friendly brow,
and that we would write a little essay about this tie and tell its
story, which, to be honest, is very interesting to us. And this
essay we are now endeavouring to write, even if it has to run in
several instalments.
It was curious, incidentally (but not really more curious than most
human affairs), that Pete (or Mr. Corcoran) whether he was merely
chaffing us, or whether he was really curious about a scarf of such
wanton colour scheme, should have mentioned it just when he did, for
as a matter of fact that tie had been on our mind all morning. You
see to-day being warm (and please remember that what we call
to-day, is now, when you are reading this, yesterday) we did not
wear our waistcoat, or, if you prefer, our vest; but by the time we
had decided not to wear our waistcoat we had already tied our scarf
in the usual way we tie that particular scarf when we wear it, viz.,
so as to conceal a certain spot on it which got there we know not
how. We do not know what kind of a spot it is; perhaps it is a soup
stain, perhaps it is due to a shrimp salad we had with Endymion at
that amusing place that calls itself the Crystal Palace; we will not
attempt to trace the origin of that swarthy blemish on the soft silk
of our tie; but we have cunningly taught ourself to knot the thing
so that the spot does not show. (Good, we have made that plain: we
are getting along famously.)
Since the above was written we have been uptown and had lunch with
Alf Harcourt and Will Howe and other merry gentlemen; and Will Howe,
who used to be a professor of English and is now a publisher, says
we ought to break up our essays into shorter paragraphs. We are fain
and teachable, as someone once said in a very pretty poem; we will
start a new paragraph right away.
But when our tie is tied in the manner described above, it leaves
one end very much longer than the other. This is not noticeable when
we wear our waistcoat; but having left off our waistcoat, we were
fearful that the manner in which our tie was disposed would attract
attention; and everyone would suspect just why it was tied in that
way.
And we did not have time to take it off and put on another one,
because we had to catch the 8:06.
So when Pete Corcoran spoke about our tie, was that what was in his
mind, we wondered? Did he _infer_ the existence of that spot, even
though he did not see it? And did he therefore look down upon, or
otherwise feel inclined to belittle our tie? If that were the case,
we felt that we really owed it to ourself to tell the story of the
tie, how we bought it, and why; and just why that tie is to us not
merely a strip of rather gaudy neckwear, but a symbol of an
enchanting experience, a memory and token of an epoch in our life,
the sign and expression of a certain feeling that can never come
again--and, indeed (as the sequel will show), that should not have
come when it did.
It was a bright morning, last November, in Gloversville, New York,
when we bought that tie. Now an explanation of just why we bought
that tie, and what we were doing in Gloversville, cannot possibly be
put into a paragraph, at any rate the kind of paragraph that Will
Howe (who used to be a professor of English) would approve. On the
whole, rather than rewrite the entire narrative, tersely, we will
have to postpone the dénouement (of the story, not the tie) until
to-morrow. This is an exhibition of the difficulty of telling
anything exactly. There are so many subsidiary considerations that
beg for explanation. Please be patient, Pete, and to-morrow we will
explain that tie in detail.