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The Bishop of London, Lord Cromer, the maker of modern Egypt, Sargent, the painter, and Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, were among those greeted in this way. In the front row on one side of the dais were seated the aldermen of the city in their red robes, and various officials in wigs and gowns lent to the scene a curiously antique aspect to the American eye.
Medenham had a sense of humor denied to his well-meaning sire. He recalled the last time he had heard those words. He and another sprig of nobility had come up to London from Winchester without leave in order to attend a famous glove contest between heavyweights, and there had been wigs on the green before an irate head-master would even deign to flog them.
Lending as he did upon pledges, and carrying on a pretty large trade, it was not for him, of course, to inquire into the pedigree of all the pieces of plate, the bales of cloth, swords, watches, wigs, shoe-buckles, etc. that were confided by his friends to his keeping; but it is clear that his friends had the requisite confidence in him, and that he enjoyed the esteem of a class of characters who still live in history, and are admired unto this very day.
We happen to know that some of these people, for this very delicacy of air and manner picked out of the dirt, and carried into high places, who are au naturel, as we may say, when they go home, and have laid aside the wigs, silk waistcoats, quizzing-glasses, and the rest of their disguise, as honest, friendly, and unaffected fellows, as are in the world only they do not desire that any body should say so.
If it is a wig, and we spot it, that's all that we need. We are put on our guard; we know with whom we have now to deal. But you can't take a man up on a charge of wig-wearing. The law doesn't interfere with it. Most respectable men may sometimes wear wigs. Why, I knew a promoter who did, and also the director of fourteen companies!
"Besides, the Seven Dwarfs will be great. Will you do it?" "All right," acquiesced Marjorie. "What are you going as?" "One of the 'Fat Friars," giggled Jerry. "Don't you remember, 'Four Fat Friars Fanning a Fainting Fly'? I'm going to ask three more stout girls to join me. We'll wear long, gray frocks, get bald-headed wigs and carry palmleaf fans.
And the Admirable Inquiry goes on, punctuated by idiotic laughter, by paid-for cries of indignation from under legal wigs, bringing to light the psychology of various commercial characters too stupid to know that they are giving themselves away an admirably laborious inquiry into facts that speak, nay shout, for themselves. I am not a soft-headed, humanitarian faddist.
But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were "in it," and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I. They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way, and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody.
Roderick led the way as the scarlet old woman, and was followed by humpbacks, bulging paunches, cumbrous wigs, Scaramouches, Punches, shrivelled Pantaloons, curtsying women embankt by enormous hoops, and overcanopied with a yard of horsehair, powder, and pomatum, and by every disgusting shape that can be imagined, as if a nightmair had been unrolling her stores.
The rest were for the most part but wooden ancestors displaying curled wigs, legs which lacked drawing, and high-heeled shoes. A few old cabinets remained, and a glorious suite of chairs of Queen Anne's time these, however, were perishing, like the rest from want of proper care and firing.
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