ontinuous social
performance. He was the first man in town who dared to wear a flannel
tennis suit on the streets, and he was a whole year ahead of the other
boys with his Panama hat. It was one of those broad-brimmed Panamas,
full of heart-interest, that made him look like a romantic barytone, and
when under that gala facade he came tripping into the office in his
white duck clothes, with a wide Windsor tie, Miss Larrabee, the society
editor, who was the only one of us with whom he ever had any business,
would pull the string that unhooked the latch of the gate to her section
of the room and say, without looking up: "Come into the garden, Maud."
To which he made invariable reply: "Oh, Miss Larrabee, don't be so
sarcastic! I have a little item for you."

The little item was always an account of one of his social triumphs. And
there was a long list of them to his credit. He introduced ping-pong; he
gave us our first "pit party"; he held the first barn dance given in the
county; his was our first "tacky party"; and he gave the first
progressive buggy ride the young people had ever enjoyed, and seven
girls afterward confessed that on the evening of that affair he hadn't
been in the buggy with them five minutes before he began driving with
one hand--and his right hand at that. Still, when the crowd assembled
for supper at Flat Rock, the girls didn't hold his left handiwork
against him, and they admitted that he was just killing when he put on
one of their hats and gave an imitation of a girl from Bethany College
who had been visiting in town the week before. Beverly was always the
life of the company. He could make three kinds of salad dressing, two
kinds of lobster Newburgh and four Welsh rarebits, and was often the
sole guest of honour at the afternoon meetings of the T. T. T. girls,
before whom he was always willing to show his prowess. Sometimes he
gave chafing-dish parties whereat he served ginger ale and was real
devilish.

He used to ride around the country bare-headed with two or three girls
when honest men were at work, and he acquired a fine leather-coloured
tan. He tried organising a polo club, but the ponies from the delivery
waggons that were available after six o'clock did not take training
well, and he gave up polo. In making horse-back riding a social
diversion he taught a lot of fine old family buggy horses a number of
mincing steps, so that thereafter they were impossible in the family
phaeton. He thereb