The Goldfish | Page 4

powder in the water for the sake of the
odor. I like hot baths and spend a good deal of time in the Turkish bath
at my club. After steaming myself for half an hour and taking a cold
plunge, an alcohol rub and a cocktail, I feel younger than ever; but the
sight of my fellow men in the bath revolts me. Almost without
exception they have flabby, pendulous stomachs out of all proportion to
the rest of their bodies. Most of them are bald and their feet are
excessively ugly, so that, as they lie stretched out on glass slabs to be
rubbed down with salt and scrubbed, they appear to be deformed. I
speak now of the men of my age. Sometimes a boy comes in that looks
like a Greek god; but generally the boys are as weird-looking as the

men. I am rambling, however. Anyhow I am less repulsive than most of
them. Yet, unless the human race has steadily deteriorated, I am
surprised that the Creator was not discouraged after his first attempt.
I clothe my body in the choicest apparel that my purse can buy, but am
careful to avoid the expressions of fancy against which Polonius warns
us. My coats and trousers are made in London, and so are my
underclothes, which are woven to order of silk and cotton. My shoes
cost me fourteen dollars a pair; my silk socks, six dollars; my ordinary
shirts, five dollars; and my dress shirts, fifteen dollars each. On brisk
evenings I wear to dinner and the opera a mink-lined overcoat, for
which my wife recently paid seven hundred and fifty dollars. The
storage and insurance on this coat come to twenty-five dollars annually
and the repairs to about forty-five. I am rather fond of overcoats and
own half a dozen of them, all made in Inverness.
I wear silk pajamas--pearl-gray, pink, buff and blue, with frogs, cuffs
and monograms--which by the set cost me forty dollars. I also have a
pair of pearl evening studs to wear with my dress suit, for which my
wife paid five hundred and fifty dollars, and my cuff buttons cost me a
hundred and seventy-five. Thus, if I am not an exquisite--which I
distinctly am not--I am exceedingly well dressed, and I am glad to be
so. If I did not have a fur coat to wear to the opera I should feel
embarrassed, out of place and shabby. All the men who sit in the boxes
at the Metropolitan Opera House have fur overcoats.
As a boy I had very few clothes indeed, and those I had were made to
last a long time. But now without fine raiment I am sure I should be
miserable. I cannot imagine myself shabby. Yet I can imagine any one
of my friends being shabby without feeling any uneasiness about
it--that is to say, I am the first to profess a democracy of spirit in which
clothes cut no figure at all. I assert that it is the man, and not his clothes,
that I value; but in my own case my silk-and-cotton undershirt is a
necessity, and if deprived of it I should, I know, lose some attribute of
self.
At any rate, my bluff, easy, confident manner among my fellow men,
which has played so important a part in my success, would be

impossible. I could never patronize anybody if my necktie were frayed
or my sleeves too short. I know that my clothes are as much a part of
my entity as my hair, eyes and voice--more than any of the rest of me.
Based on the figures given above I am worth--the material part of
me--as I step out of my front door to go forth to dinner, something over
fifteen hundred dollars. If I were killed in a railroad accident all these
things would be packed carefully in a box, inventoried, and given a
much greater degree of attention than my mere body. I saw Napoleon's
boots and waistcoat the other day in Paris and I felt that he himself
must be there in the glass case beside me.
Any one who at Abbotsford has felt of the white beaver hat of Sir
Walter Scott knows that he has touched part--and a very considerable
part--of Sir Walter. The hat, the boots, the waistcoat are far less
ephemeral than the body they protect, and indicate almost as much of
the wearer's character as his hands and face. So I am not ashamed of
my silk pajamas or of the geranium powder I throw in my bath. They
are part of me.
But is this "me" limited to my body and my clothes? I drink a cup of
coffee or a cocktail: after they are consumed they are part