Among the commonplace white and yellow envelopes that compose the bulk of
one’s correspondence, appear from time to time dainty epistles on tinted
paper, adorned with crests or monograms. “Ha! ha!” I think when one of
these appears, “here is something worth opening!” For between ourselves,
reader mine, old bachelors love to receive notes from women. It’s so
flattering to be remembered by the dear creatures, and recalls the time
when life was beginning, and _poulets_ in feminine writing suggested such
delightful possibilities.
Only this morning an envelope of delicate Nile green caused me a distinct
thrill of anticipation. To judge by appearances it could contain nothing
less attractive than a declaration, so, tearing it hurriedly open, I
read: “Messrs. Sparks & Splithers take pleasure in calling attention to
their patent suspenders and newest designs in reversible paper collars!”
Now, if that’s not enough to put any man in a bad humor for twenty-four
hours, I should like to know what is? Moreover, I have “patents” in
horror, experience having long ago revealed the fact that a patent is
pretty sure to be only a new way of doing fast and cheaply something that
formerly was accomplished slowly and well.
Few people stop to think how quickly this land of ours is degenerating
into a paradise of the cheap and nasty, but allow themselves to be heated
and cooled and whirled about the streets to the detriment of their nerves
and digestions, under the impression that they are enjoying the benefits
of modern progress.
So complex has life become in these later days that the very beds we lie
on and the meals we eat are controlled by patents. Every garment and
piece of furniture now pays a “royalty” to some inventor, from the hats
on our heads to the carpets under foot, which latter are not only
manufactured, but cleaned and shaken by machinery, and (be it remarked
_en passant_) lose their nap prematurely in the process. To satisfy our
national love of the new, an endless and nameless variety of trifles
appears each season, so-called labor and time-saving combinations, that
enjoy a brief hour of vogue, only to make way for a newer series of
inventions.
As long as our geniuses confined themselves to making life one long and
breathless scramble, it was bad enough, but a line should have been drawn
where meddling with the sanctity of the toilet began. This, alas! was
not done. Nothing has remained sacred to the inventor. In consequence,
the average up-to-date American is a walking collection of Yankee
notions, an ingenious illusion, made up of patents, requiring as nice
adjustment to put together and undo as a thirteenth-century warrior, and
carrying hardly less metal about his person than a Crusader of old.
There are a number of haberdashery shops on Broadway that have caused me
to waste many precious minutes gazing into their windows and wondering
what the strange instruments of steel and elastic could be, that were
exhibited alongside of the socks and ties. The uses of these would, in
all probability, have remained wrapped in mystery but for the experience
of one fateful morning (after a night in a sleeping-car), when countless
hidden things were made clear, as I sat, an awestruck witness to my
fellow-passengers’—toilets?—No! Getting their machinery into running
order for the day, would be a more correct expression.
Originally, “tags” were the backbone of the toilet, different garments
being held together by their aid. Later, buttons and attendant
button-holes were evolved, now replaced by the devices used in composing
the machine-made man. As far as I could see (I have overcome a natural
delicacy in making my discoveries public, because it seems unfair to keep
all this information to myself), nothing so archaic as a button-hole is
employed at the present time by our patent-ridden compatriots. The
shirt, for instance, which was formerly such a simple-minded and
straightforward garment, knowing no guile, has become, in the hands of
the inventors, a mere pretence, a frail scaffold, on which an elaborate
superstructure of shams is erected.
The varieties of this garment that one sees in the shop windows, exposing
virgin bosoms to the day, are not what they seem! Those very bosoms are
fakes, and cannot open, being instead pierced by eyelets, into which
bogus studs are fixed by machinery. The owner is obliged to enter into
those deceptive garments surreptitiously from the rear, by stratagem, as
it were. Why all this trouble, one asks, for no apparent reason, except
that old-fashioned shirts opened in front, and no Yankee will wear a
non-patented garment—if he can help it?
There was not a single accessory to the toilet in that car which behaved
in a normal way. Buttons mostly backed into place, tail-end foremost
(like horses getting between shafts), where some hidden mechanism screwed
or clinched them to their moorings.
Collars and cuffs (integral parts of the primitive garment) are now a
labyrinth, in which all but the initiated must lose themselves, being
double-decked, detachable, reversible, and made of every known substance
except linen. The cuff most in favor can be worn four different ways,
and is attached to the shirt by a steel instrument three inches long,
with a nipper at each end. The amount of white visible below the
coat-sleeve is regulated by another contrivance, mostly of elastic, worn
further up the arm, around the biceps. Modern collars are retained in
position by a system of screws and levers. Socks are attached no longer
with the old-fashioned garter, but by aid of a little harness similar to
that worn by pug-dogs.
One traveller, after lacing his shoes, adjusted a contrivance resembling
a black beetle on the knot to prevent its untying. He also wore
“hygienic suspenders,” a discovery of great importance (over three
thousand patents have been taken out for this one necessity of the
toilet!). This brace performs several tasks at the same time, such as
holding unmentionable garments in place, keeping the wearer erect, and
providing a night-key guard. It is also said to cure liver and kidney
disease by means of an arrangement of pulleys which throw the strain
according to the wearer’s position—I omit the rest of its qualities!
The watches of my companions, I noticed with astonishment, all wore
India-rubber ruffs around their necks. Here curiosity getting the better
of discretion, I asked what purpose that invention served. It was
graciously explained to me how such ruffs prevented theft. They were so
made that it was impossible to draw your watch out of a pocket unless you
knew the trick, which struck me as a mitigated blessing. In fact, the
idea kept occurring that life might become terribly uncomfortable under
these complex conditions for absent-minded people.
Pencils, I find, are no longer put into pockets or slipped behind the
ear. Every commercial “gent” wears a patent on his chest, where his pen
and pencil nestle in a coil of wire. Eyeglasses are not allowed to
dangle aimlessly about, as of old, but retire with a snap into an oval
box, after the fashion of roller shades. Scarf-pins have guards screwed
on from behind, and undergarments—but here modesty stops my pen.
Seeing that I was interested in their make-up, several travelling agents
on the train got out their boxes and showed me the latest artifices that
could be attached to the person. One gentleman produced a collection of
rings made to go on the finger with a spring, like bracelets, an
arrangement, he explained, that was particularly convenient for people
afflicted with enlarged joints!
Another tempted me with what he called a “literary shirt front,”—it was
in fact a paper pad, from which for cleanliness a leaf could be peeled
each morning; the “wrong” side of the sheet thus removed contained a
calendar, much useful information, and the chapters of a “continued”
story, which ended when the “dickey” was used up.
A third traveller was “pushing” a collar-button that plied as many trades
as Figaro, combining the functions of cravat-holder, stud, and scarf-pin.
Not being successful in selling me one of these, he brought forward
something ”without which,” he assured me, “no gentleman’s wardrobe was
complete”! It proved to be an insidious arrangement of gilt wire, which
he adjusted on his poor, overworked collar-button, and then tied his
cravat through and around it. “No tie thus made,” he said, “would ever
slip or get crooked.” He had been so civil that it was embarrassing not
to buy something of him; I invested twenty-five cents in the
cravat-holder, as it seemed the least complicated of the patents on
exhibition; not, however, having graduated in a school of mechanics I
have never been able to make it work. It takes an hour to tie a cravat
with its aid, and as long to get it untied. Most of the men in that car,
I found, got around the difficulty by wearing ready-made ties which
fastened behind with a clasp.
It has been suggested that the reason our compatriots have such a
strained and anxious look is because they are all trying to remember the
numbers of their streets and houses, the floor their office is on, and
the combination of their safes. I am inclined to think that the hunted
look we wear comes from an awful fear of forgetting the secrets of our
patents and being unable to undo ourselves in an emergency!
Think for a moment of the horror of coming home tired and sleepy after a
convivial evening, and finding that some of your hidden machinery had
gone wrong; that by a sudden movement you had disturbed the nice balance
of some lever which in revenge refused to release its prey! The
inventors of one well-known cuff-holder claim that it had a “bull-dog
grip.” Think of sitting dressed all night in the embrace of that
mechanical canine until the inventor could be called in to set you free!
I never doubted that bravery was the leading characteristic of the
American temperament; since that glimpse into the secret composition of
my compatriots, admiration has been vastly increased. The foolhardy
daring it must require—dressed as those men were—to go out in a
thunder-storm makes one shudder: it certainly could not be found in any
other race. The danger of cross-country hunting or bull-fighting is as
nothing compared to the risk a modern American takes when he sits in a
trolley-car, where the chances of his machinery forming a fatal “short
circuit” must be immense. The utter impossibility in which he finds
himself of making a toilet quickly on account of so many time-saving
accessories must increase his chances of getting “left” in an accident
about fifty per cent. Who but one of our people could contemplate with
equanimity the thought of attempting the adjustment of such delicate and
difficult combinations while a steamer was sinking and the life-boats
being manned?
Our grandfathers contributed the wooden nutmeg to civilization, and
endowed a grateful universe with other money-saving devices. To-day the
inventor takes the American baby from his cradle and does not release him
even at the grave. What a treat one of the machine-made men of to-day
will be to the archeologists of the year 3000, when they chance upon a
well-preserved specimen, with all his patents thick upon I him! With a
prophetic eye one can almost see the kindly old gentleman of that day
studying the paraphernalia found in the tomb and attempting to account
for the different pieces. Ink will flow and discussions rage between the
camp maintaining that cuff-holders were tutelar deities buried with the
dead by pious relatives and the croup asserting that the little pieces of
steel were a form of pocket money in the year 1900. Both will probably
misquote Tennyson and Kipling in support of their theories.
The question has often been raised, What side of our nineteenth-century
civilization will be most admired by future generations? In view of the
above facts there can remain little doubt that when the secrets of the
paper collar and the trouser-stretcher have become lost arts, it will be
those benefits that remote ages will envy us, and rare specimens of
“ventilated shoes” and “reversible tissue-paper undergarments” will form
the choicest treasures of the collector.