tin cravat. This he tied with
extreme care, according to the approved formula of "twice around and up
and down." Few men could tie a cravat in better style. He also got out
the new frock-coat, made by the best tailor in Cappadocia, carefully
cherished, and only worn on special occasions--the last being the
evening on which he had taken supper at the house of the Baptist
minister. If there was something slightly rustic about the cut or set of
the coat, Millard did not suspect it. The only indispensable thing about
clothes is that the wearer shall be at peace with them. Poor Richard
ventured the proposition that "our neighbors' eyes" are the costliest
things in life, but Bonhomme Richard may have been a little off the mark
just there. Other people's opinions about my garments are of small
consequence except in so far as they affect my own conceit of them.
Charley Millard issued from his room at half-past six content with
himself, and, what was of much more importance to the peace of his
soul, content with his clothes.

At eleven o'clock Millard is in his room again. The broadcloth Prince
Albert lies in an ignominious heap in the corner of the sofa. The satin
cravat is against the looking-glass on the dressing-case, just as
Charley has thrown it down. Nothing has happened to the coat or the
cravat; both are as immaculate as at their sallying forth. But Millard
does not regard either of them; he sits moodily in his chair by the
grate and postpones to the latest moment the disagreeable task of
putting them away.

No matter what the subject under consideration, we later
nineteenth-century people are pretty sure to be brought face to face
with the intellect that has dominated our age, modified our modes of
thinking, and become the main source of all our metaphysical
discomforts. It is this same inevitable Charles Darwin who says that a
man may be made more unhappy by committing a breach of etiquette than by
falling into sin. If Millard had embezzled a thousand dollars of the
bank's funds, could he have been more remorseful than he is now? And all
for nothing but that he found himself at dinner with more cloth in the
tail of his coat than there was in the coattails of his neighbors, and
that he wore an expensive black cravat while all the rest of the world
had on ghostly white linen ties that cost but a dime or two apiece.

Of course Millard exaggerated the importance of his mistake. Young men
who wear frock-coats to dinner,