W. S. Jackson. The hero found himself in a foreign
hotel without his luggage. To that hotel came, with her father,
the girl whom he adored silently. An invitation was given him to
dinner with them, and he had to borrow what clothes he could from
friendly waiters. These, alas! included a dicky. Well, the dinner
began well; our hero made an excellent impression; all was
gaiety. Suddenly a candle was overturned and the flame caught the
heroine's frock. The hero knew what the emergency demanded. He
knew how heroes always whipped off their coats and wrapped them
round burning heroines. He jumped up like a bullet (or whatever
jumps up quickest) and --remembered.
He had a dicky on! Without his coat, he would discover the dicky
to the one person of all from whom he wished to hide it. Yet if
he kept his coat on, she might die. A truly horrible dilemma. I
forget which horn he impaled himself upon, but I expect you and I
would have kept the secret of the Richard at all costs. And what
really is wrong with a false shirt-front? Nothing except that it
betrays the poverty of the wearer. Laundry bills don't worry us,
bless you, who have a new straw hat every day; but how terrible
if it was suspected that they did.
Our gentlemanly objection to the made-up tie seems to rest on a
different foundation; I am doubtful as to the psychology of that.
Of course it is a deception, but a deception is only serious when
it passes itself off as something which really matters.
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