ng left out of many delightful dinners and receptions had
been painfully evident to me for several years, but the consideration
which had most weight with me, at this time, was expressed by one of my
friends who bluntly declared that all the desirable young women of my
acquaintance not only adored men in evening dress but ridiculed those of
us who went about at all hours of the day and night in "solemn, shiny,
black frocks." I perceived that unless I paid a little more attention to
tailors and barbers and haberdashers my chances for bringing a new
daughter to my mother were dishearteningly remote. Secretly alarmed and
meditating a shameful surrender, I was held in check by the thought of
the highly involved system of buttons, ties, gloves, hats, and shoes
with which I would be called upon to wrestle.

Zangwill, to whom I confided my perplexity, bluntly advised me to
conform. "In truth," said he, "the steel pen suit is the most democratic
of garments. It renders the poor author indistinguishable from the
millionaire."

As usual I referred the problem to Howells. After explaining that I had
in mind a plan to visit England I said, "Every one but John Burroughs
says I must get into the swallow-tail coat; and I will confess that even
here in New York I am often embarrassed by finding myself the only man
in a frock suit at a dinner."

Howells smiled and with delightful humor and that precision of phrase
which made him my joy and my despair, answered, "My dear fellow, why
don't you make your proposed visit to England, buy your evening suit
there and on your return to Chicago plead the inexorability of English
social usages?"

He had pointed the way out. "By George, I'll do just that," I declared,
vastly elated.

In this account of my hesitations I am _still_ the historian. In stating
my case I am stating the perplexities of thousands of my fellow
citizens of the Middle Border. It has its humorous phases--this reversal
of social habit in me, but it also has wide significance. My surrender
was coincident with similar changes of thought in millions of other
young men throughout the West. It was but another indication that the
customs of the Border were fading to a memory, and that Western society,
which had long been dominated by the stately figures of the minister and
the judge, was on its way to adopt the manners and customs of the
openly-derided but secretly admired "four hundred."

Having decided on my sailing date I a