ooked like the advertisement for a new linen collar. It was
this reply of mine that attracted Howard King's attention. He had been
sitting in one corner of the room quite as disconsolate as I was. But
now he walked over and shook hands and told me that in his opinion
"Robert Elsmere" was not so good a book as "Trilby," which he was just
reading.

Howard King and I belong to the comparatively small class of men whom
nature, or fate, or whatever you please, has decreed to be always a
certain interval behind the times; it might be years or months or days,
according to the rate of speed at which a particular fashion happened to
be moving forward. King told me, for instance, that of late he has been
possessed with a passionate desire to learn the game of ping-pong. When
all the world was playing table-tennis eight or ten years ago, King
viewed the game with disgust. He thought it utterly childish,
uninteresting, and admirably illustrative of all the idiotic qualities
that go to make up a fad. But for the last six months, King said, he
frequently wakes at night and sits up in bed and yearns with all his
soul for a ping-pong set. He was, of course, ashamed to speak to others
about it. But if he could find some one who shared his feelings on the
subject, he had a large library with a square table in it. Would I come
to-morrow night? I said I should be very glad, indeed.

I told Howard King what my attitude is toward clothes. It is my fate
always to grow fond of a fashion just as it is passing out. I recalled
the exaggerated military styles for men that came in with the
Spanish-American and the South African wars. Those enormously padded
shoulders and tight-shaped waists and swelling trouser legs, and the
strut and the stoop that went with the whole ugly _ensemble_, roused my
anger. My feelings remained unchanged until some time after the
Russo-Japanese War, and then one day it came to me that I must have a
suit of military cut. It was like the sudden awakening of the
unregenerate to grace, it was as irresistible as first love. And when
the tailor said that only sloping shoulders were now being worn, that
what I wanted was hopelessly out of date, the sense of loss was
overpowering. I confessed to King that in my opinion nothing uglier in
men's apparel was conceivable than the green plush hats that are just
beginning to go out of style. And I told him that I was as certain as I
am certain of anything in this world that some day