ward, for there are few
men who are in reality braver than I am. I carried my firstborn in my
arms round the drawing-room when she was a week old, and I have done
other things equally brave, the enumeration of which I spare you.
But I could no more think of getting my hair cut without previously
informing my wife than I could think of wearing a top hat in the
Strand.

I know what will happen when I have told my wife. She will look up and
say, "That's right; you always do it."

And I shall say, "What do I always do?"

And she will answer, "You always get yourself cropped like a convict
just when your hair was beginning to look nice."

And I shall say, "I can't help that; it's got to be done." And then I
shall go and get it done.

But I wonder if my wife is right after all. There used to be a nice
wave in my front hair, a wave into which you could lay two fingers. Is
that there still? No, it's gone. In fact there is not sufficient front
hair to make a wave with. It's odd how gradually these things happen.
I could have sworn that I had that wave, and there is a photograph
of me in the drawing-room with a fully-developed tidal bore; and I
went on brushing my front hair and combing it and thinking of it all
the time as constituting a wave, and lo it had vanished, leaving me
under the impression that it was still there and accountable for the
pleasing effect I produced in general society.

But if it wasn't the wave that produced this effect, what could it
have been? My voice? Perhaps. My moustache? I doubt it. My teeth?
Possibly. See advertisements of tooth powders _passim_. You know how
it's done, in the before and after style. Before you use Dentoline you
apparently do not possess so much as a front tooth. After you have
used it once you are in possession of thirty-two regular and brilliant
white teeth, and it seems plain that no dentist will ever make his
fortune out of your mouth. All this, however, has nothing to do with
getting my hair cut. But it brings me to an analogous consideration.
When I tell my wife I am going to get my teeth attended to, does she
try to restrain me from the fatal deed? Not she. She urges me to it,
and leaves me no loophole for escape. She indulges in reminiscences
of herself and the children defying pain in the dentist's chair, and
heartens me with the statement that the instrument she likes best is
the one that goes _berr-r-r-r_ and makes you jump.

Let me now resume my commentary on