o whisk the hair away from your ears where you want
it, and into your eyes where you don't want it, besides crowning you
with magnificent disorder in the morning. But as I have always believed
that no evil exists without its remedy, I had long been exercising my
inventive genius in attempts to produce a head-gear which should at once
protect the ears, confine the hair, and let the skull alone. I regret
to say that my experiments were an utter failure, notwithstanding the
amount of science and skill brought to bear upon them. One idea lay at
the basis of all my endeavors. Every combination, however elaborate or
intricate, resolved into its simplest elements, consisted of a pair of
rosettes laterally to keep the ears warm, a bag posteriorly to put the
hair into, and some kind of a string somewhere to hold the machine
together. Every possible shape into which lace or muslin or sheeting
could be cut or plaited or sewed or twisted, into which crewel or cord
could be crocheted or netted or tatted, I make bold to declare was
essayed, until things came to such a pass that every odd bit of dry
goods lying around the house was, in the absence of any positive
testimony on the subject, assumed to be one of my nightcaps,--an utterly
baseless assumption, because my achievements never went so far as
concrete capuality, but stopped short in the later stages of abstract
idealism. However, prejudice is stronger than truth; and, as I said,
every fragment of every fabric that could not give an account of itself
was charged with being a nightcap till it was proved to be a dishcloth
or a cart-rope. I at length surrendered at discretion, and remembered
that somewhere in my reading I had met with exquisite lace caps, and I
did not know but that from the combined fineness and strength of their
material they might answer the purpose, even if in form they should not
be everything that was desirable,--and I determined to ascertain, if
possible, whether such things existed anywhere out of poetry.

As you perceive, therefore, my Boston shopping was not every-day
trading. It was to mark the abandonment of an old and the inauguration
of a new line of policy. Thus it was with no ordinary interest that I
looked carefully at all the shops, and when I found one that seemed to
hold out a possibility of nightcaps, I went in. Halicarnassus obeyed the
hint which I pricked into him with the point of my parasol, and stopped
outside. The one place in the world wh