ense of being entirely
inconspicuous, a realization that I was committed to convention,
produced in me an air of perfect ease. By conforming I had become as
much a part of the scene as Sir Walter or the waiter who shifted my
plates and filled my glass. "Zangwill is right," I said, "the clawhammer
coat is in truth the most democratic of garments."

It pleased me also to dwell upon the fact that the moment of my
capitulation had been made glorious by a meeting with Stanley and Hardy
and Barrie, and that the dinner which marked this most important change
in lifelong habits of dress was appropriately notable. That several
hundred of the best known men and women of England had witnessed my
fall softened the shock, and when--on the way out--Zangwill nudged my
elbow and said, "Cow-boy, you wore 'em to the manner born," I smiled in
lofty disregard of future comment. I faced Chicago and New York with
serene and confident composure.

Although I carried this suit with me to Bernard Shaw's (on a week-end
visit), I was not called upon to wear it, for he met me in snuff-colored
knickerbockers and did not change to any other suit during my stay.
Sunday dinner at Conan Doyle's was a midday meal, and Barrie and Hardy
and other of my literary friends I met at teas or luncheons. I took my
newly-acquired uniform to Paris but as my meetings with my French
friends were either teas or lunches, it so happened that--eager as I was
to display it I did not put this suit on till after I reached home. My
first appearance in it was in the nature of a masquerade, my second was
by way of a joke to please my mother.

Knowing that she had never seen a man in evening dress I arrayed myself,
one night, as if for a banquet, and suddenly descended upon her with
intent to surprise and amuse her. I surprised her but I did not make her
laugh in the way I had expected. On the contrary she surveyed me with a
look of pride and then quietly remarked, "I like you in it. I wouldn't
mind if you dressed that way every day."

This finished my opposition to the swallow-tail coat. If my mother, the
daughter of a pioneer, a woman of the farm, accepted it as something
appropriate to her son, its ultimate acceptance by all America was
inevitable. Thereafter I lay in wait for an opportunity to display
myself in all my London finery.

* * * * *

Two months later as I was mounting the central staircase of the Chicago
Art Institute, on my w