The Ways of Men

monograms. "Ha! ha!" I think when one of these appears, "here is something worth opening!" For between ourselves, reader mine, old bachelors love to receive notes from women.

s it could contain nothing less attractive than a declaration, so, tearing it hurriedly open, I read: "Messrs. Sparks &

? Moreover, I have "patents" in horror, experience having long ago revealed the fact that a patent is pretty

nasty, but allow themselves to be heated and cooled and whirled about the streets to the detriment of

on our heads to the carpets under foot, which latter are not only manufactured, but cleaned and shaken by machinery, and (be it remarked en passant) lose their nap prematurely in the process. To satisfy our natio

oilet began. This, alas! was not done. Nothing has remained sacred to the inventor. In consequence, the average up-to-date American is a walking collection of Yankee notions, an ingenious

t were exhibited alongside of the socks and ties. The uses of these would, in all probability, have remained wrapped in mystery but for the experience of one fateful morning (after a night in a sleeping-car)

ld see (I have overcome a natural delicacy in making my discoveries public, because it seems unfair to keep all this information to myself), nothing so archaic as a button-hole is employed at the present time by our patent-ridden compatriots. T

tead pierced by eyelets, into which bogus studs are fixed by machinery. The owner is obliged to enter into those deceptive garments surreptitiously from the rear, by stratagem, as

l way. Buttons mostly backed into place, tail-end foremost (like horses getting bet

n favor can be worn four different ways, and is attached to the shirt by a steel instrument three inches long, with a nipper at each end. The amount of white visible below the coat-sleeve is regulated by another contrivance, mostly of elastic

ousand patents have been taken out for this one necessity of the toilet!). This brace performs several tasks at the same time, such as holding unmentionable garments in place, keeping the wearer erect, and

invention served. It was graciously explained to me how such ruffs prevented theft. They were so made that it was impossible to draw your watch out of a pocket unless you knew the

pen and pencil nestle in a coil of wire. Eyeglasses are not allowed to dangle aimlessly about, as of old, but retire with a snap into an o

st artifices that could be attached to the person. One gentleman produced a collection of rings made to go on the finger with a

eanliness a leaf could be peeled each morning; the "wrong" side of the sheet thus removed contained a calendar

t of gilt wire, which he adjusted on his poor, overworked collar-button, and then tied his cravat through and around it. "No tie thus made," he said, "would ever slip or get crooked." He had been so civil that it was embarrassing not to buy something of him; I invested twenty-five cents in the cravat-holder, as it seemed the least comp

e numbers of their streets and houses, the floor their office is on, and the combination of their safes. I am inclined to think that the

a sudden movement you had disturbed the nice balance of some lever which in revenge refused to release its prey! The inventors of one well-known cuff-holder clai

found in any other race. The danger of cross-country hunting or bull-fighting is as nothing compared to the risk a modern American takes when he sits in a trolley-car, where the chances of his machinery forming a fatal "short circuit" must be immense. The utter impossibility in which he finds himself of making a toilet quickly o

logists of the year 3000, when they chance upon a well-preserved specimen, with all his patents thick upon I him! With a prophetic eye one can almost see the kindly old gentleman of that day studying the paraphernalia found in the tomb and attempting to account for the different pieces. Ink will flow and

there can remain little doubt that when the secrets of the paper collar and the trouser-stretcher have become lost arts, it will be those benefits that remo