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Certain things of course they all do, buy new neckties, write letters which they read years later with amazement and consternation; keep a photograph in a drawer of the desk at the office, where the stenographer finds it and says to the office boy: "Can you beat that?
Konrad Nirlanger, Cuddler-in-chief and Authority on the Subject of Bennie's Bed-time; Mr. Blackie Griffith, Good Angel, General Cut-up and Monitor off'n Bennie's Neckties and Toys; Dr. Ernst von Gerhard, Chief Medical Adviser, and Sweller of the Exchequer, with the Privilege of Selecting All Candies. Bennie had been one of those little tragedies that find their way into juvenile court.
This singular man, who strangely enough was wearing one of his most effulgent and heterogeneous club neckties, had begun by dancing. He danced with all three ladies, one after the other; and he did not merely dance he danced modernly, he danced the new dances to the new tunes, given off like intoxicating gas from the latest of gramophones.
We were really a bit overawed, ourselves. We discussed neckties, and brushed and cleaned, and smelled considerably of gasoline as we strutted forth, too proud to tell, because we were to have tea with Brentano! I can see the street their house was on, their front door; I can feel again the little catch in our breaths as we rang the bell.
In the Lord Mayor's pew, robed in garments and chain of state, sleep my Lord Mayor and the worshipful the Sheriffs; their footmen, all in blue and green and gold, are in the aisle; the rich merchant of the parish clad in black velvet, with silk stockings, silver buckles to their shoes, ruffles of the richest and rarest lace at their throats, and neckties of the same hanging down before their long silk waistcoats, sleep in their pews it is a sleepy time for the Church Service beside their wives and children.
Even if the hero is merely an honest boy trying to get his living, he is not permitted to do so in a natural way, by hard work and years of patient effort, but is suddenly adopted by a millionaire whose pocket-book he has returned; or a rich uncle appears from sea just in the nick of time; or the remarkable boy earns a few dollars, speculates in pea-nuts or neckties, and grows rich so rapidly that Sinbad in the diamond valley is a pauper compared to him.
It was not enough. It was not enough, and yet it was, in a manner, too much. Pitiful as it was in substance, it had an extraordinary personal effect. Armour suddenly began to turn himself out well his apparel was of smarter cut than mine, and his neckties in better taste. Little elegances appeared in the studio he offered you Scotch in a Venetian decanter and Melachrinos from a chased silver box.
In the meanwhile, dancing had commenced in several spacious rooms; in others, card-playing was being indulged in. Servants, wearing black garments and white neckties, were busy carrying refreshments around. Many persons, preferring the pleasure of eating to those of playing or dancing, were seated in another room at a table loaded with meats and delicacies.
Haberdashers' clerks at least, those I have known are superior persons; they know it all, you can not tell them a single thing. I can call to witness dozens of neckties and shirts I shall never dare wear in public. But perhaps seven years among a clientele of earls and dukes, who were set in their ideas, had something to do with Thomas' attitude.
This is a matter of no small concern to the curators of the Whitman cult. The soul of Philadelphia cannot be kept alive by conventions and statistics alone. Such men as Traubel have helped. There are two kinds of rebels. By their neckties you may know them. Walt Whitman was of the kind that wears no necktie at all.
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