Sister Carrie | Page 4

time she had
been conscious of a man behind. She felt him observing her mass of
hair. He had been fidgetting, and with natural intuition she felt a certain
interest growing in that quarter. Her maidenly reserve, and a certain
sense of what was conventional under the circumstances, called her to
forestall and deny this familiarity, but the daring and magnetism of the
individual, born of past experiences and triumphs, prevailed. She
answered.
He leaned forward to put his elbows upon the back of her seat and
proceeded to make himself volubly agreeable.
"Yes, that is a great resort for Chicago people. The hotels are swell.
You are not familiar with this part of the country, are you?"
"Oh, yes, I am," answered Carrie. "That is, I live at Columbia City. I
have never been through here, though."
"And so this is your first visit to Chicago," he observed.
All the time she was conscious of certain features out of the side of her
eye. Flush, colourful cheeks, a light moustache, a grey fedora hat. She
now turned and looked upon him in full, the instincts of self-protection
and coquetry mingling confusedly in her brain.
"I didn't say that," she said.
"Oh," he answered, in a very pleasing way and with an assumed air of
mistake, "I thought you did."
Here was a type of the travelling canvasser for a manufacturing
house--a class which at that time was first being dubbed by the slang of

the day "drummers." He came within the meaning of a still newer term,
which had sprung into general use among Americans in 1880, and
which concisely expressed the thought of one whose dress or manners
are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women--a
"masher." His suit was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool,
new at that time, but since become familiar as a business suit. The low
crotch of the vest revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes.
From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern,
fastened with large, gold plate buttons, set with the common yellow
agates known as "cat's-eyes." His fingers bore several rings--one, the
ever-enduring heavy seal--and from his vest dangled a neat gold watch
chain, from which was suspended the secret insignia of the Order of
Elks. The whole suit was rather tight-fitting, and was finished off with
heavy-soled tan shoes, highly polished, and the grey fedora hat. He was,
for the order of intellect represented, attractive, and whatever he had to
recommend him, you may be sure was not lost upon Carrie, in this, her
first glance.
Lest this order of individual should permanently pass, let me put down
some of the most striking characteristics of his most successful manner
and method. Good clothes, of course, were the first essential, the things
without which he was nothing. A strong physical nature, actuated by a
keen desire for the feminine, was the next. A mind free of any
consideration of the problems or forces of the world and actuated not
by greed, but an insatiable love of variable pleasure. His method was
always simple. Its principal element was daring, backed, of course, by
an intense desire and admiration for the sex. Let him meet with a young
woman once and he would approach her with an air of kindly
familiarity, not unmixed with pleading, which would result in most
cases in a tolerant acceptance. If she showed any tendency to coquetry
he would be apt to straighten her tie, or if she "took up" with him at all,
to call her by her first name. If he visited a department store it was to
lounge familiarly over the counter and ask some leading questions. In
more exclusive circles, on the train or in waiting stations, he went
slower. If some seemingly vulnerable object appeared he was all
attention-- to pass the compliments of the day, to lead the way to the
parlor car, carrying her grip, or, failing that, to take a seat next her with

the hope of being able to court her to her destination. Pillows, books, a
footstool, the shade lowered; all these figured in the things which he
could do. If, when she reached her destination he did not alight and
attend her baggage for her, it was because, in his own estimation, he
had signally failed.
A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes.
No matter how young, it is one of the things she wholly comprehends.
There is an indescribably faint line in the matter of man's apparel which
somehow divides for her those who are worth glancing at and those
who are not. Once an individual has passed this faint line on the way
downward he will get no