a certain spot on it which got there we know not
how. We do not know what kind of a spot it is; perhaps it is a soup
stain, perhaps it is due to a shrimp salad we had with Endymion at
that amusing place that calls itself the Crystal Palace; we will not
attempt to trace the origin of that swarthy blemish on the soft silk
of our tie; but we have cunningly taught ourself to knot the thing
so that the spot does not show. (Good, we have made that plain: we
are getting along famously.)

Since the above was written we have been uptown and had lunch with
Alf Harcourt and Will Howe and other merry gentlemen; and Will Howe,
who used to be a professor of English and is now a publisher, says
we ought to break up our essays into shorter paragraphs. We are fain
and teachable, as someone once said in a very pretty poem; we will
start a new paragraph right away.

But when our tie is tied in the manner described above, it leaves
one end very much longer than the other. This is not noticeable when
we wear our waistcoat; but having left off our waistcoat, we were
fearful that the manner in which our tie was disposed would attract
attention; and everyone would suspect just why it was tied in that
way.

And we did not have time to take it off and put on another one,
because we had to catch the 8:06.

So when Pete Corcoran spoke about our tie, was that what was in his
mind, we wondered? Did he _infer_ the existence of that spot, even
though he did not see it? And did he therefore look down upon, or
otherwise feel inclined to belittle our tie? If that were the case,
we felt that we really owed it to ourself to tell the story of the
tie, how we bought it, and why; and just why that tie is to us not
merely a strip of rather gaudy neckwear, but a symbol of an
enchanting experience, a memory and token of an epoch in our life,
the sign and expression of a certain feeling that can never come
again--and, indeed (as the sequel will show), that should not have
come when it did.

It was a bright morning, last November, in Gloversville, New York,
when we bought that tie. Now an explanation of just why we bought
that tie, and what we were doing in Gloversville, cannot possibly be
put into a paragraph, at any rate the kind of paragraph that Will
Howe (who used to be a professor of English) would approve. On the
whole, rather than rewrite the entire narrative, tersely, we will
have to postpone the denouement (of the story, not the tie) until
to-mo