and
inexperienced barber practised his art upon me. I sat in the chair of a
hairdresser's not a hundred miles from Regent Street. I had selected a
highly respectable, thoroughly English establishment, as I was tired of
being held by the nose by foreigners' fingers saturated with the
nicotine of bad cigarettes. I entered gaily, and to my delight a
fresh-looking British youth tied me up in the chair of torture, lathered
my chin, and began operations. I was not aware of the fact that I was
being made a chopping-block of until the youth, agitated and extremely
nervous, produced a huge piece of lint and commenced dabbing patches of
it upon my countenance. Then I looked at myself in the glass. Good
heavens! Was I gazing upon myself, or was it some German student,
lacerated and bleeding after a sanguinary duel? I stormed and raged, and
called for the proprietor, who was gentle and sorry and apologetic, and
explained to me that the boy must begin upon somebody, and I
unfortunately was the first victim! I allow my beard to grow now.

Otherwise I should not have been eligible for the New York Pointed
Beards, for no qualification is necessary except that one wear a beard
cut to a point.

The tables were ornamented with lamps having shades cut to represent
pointed beards. A toy goat, the emblem of the club, was the centre
decoration. We had the "Head Barber," and, of course, any amount of soft
soap. A leading Republican was in the barber's chair, and during dinner
some sensation was caused by one of the guests being discovered wearing
a false beard. He was immediately seized and ejected until after the
dinner, when he returned with his music. It so happened we had present a
member of the Italian Opera, with his beautiful pointed beard, and he
had also a beautiful voice. But New York could not supply an accompanist
with a pointed beard! So a false beard was preferred to false notes. The
speeches were pointed, but not cut as short as the beard--rather too
pointed and too long. It was just after the Bryan political crisis. The
leading politician in the chair and one of the guests, a political
leader writer, who had not met--not even at their barber's--since the
election, had some electioneering dispute to settle. Americans, unlike
us, drag politics into everything. Take away this peculiarity and you
take away two-thirds of their excellent after-dinner speaking. The
Pointed Beards may have something to do with the matter. The two lost