apparently that John was troubled by pedal callouses.) Peter, we
repeat, and to avoid any further misunderstanding and press
diligently toward our theme, having mentioned his garden, who
should come up to us but Pete Corcoran, also of the composing room
force, and a waggish friend of ours, and gazing on us in a manner
calculated to make us feel ill at ease he said, "I suppose you are
going to write something about that tie of yours."

Now we were wearing a scarf that we are very fond of, the kind of
tie, we believe, that is spoken of as "regimental stripes"; at any
rate, it is designated with broad diagonal bands of colour: claret,
gold, and blue. It was obvious to us that Pete Corcoran, or, to give
him his proper name, Mr. Corcoran, had said what he did merely in a
humorous way, or possibly satiric, implying that we are generally so
hard up for something to write about that we would even undertake so
trifling a subject as haberdashery; but as we went downstairs again
to our kennel, _au dixième_, as Mr. Wanamaker would call it, we
thought seriously about this and decided that we would cause Pete's
light-hearted suggestion to recoil violently upon his friendly brow,
and that we would write a little essay about this tie and tell its
story, which, to be honest, is very interesting to us. And this
essay we are now endeavouring to write, even if it has to run in
several instalments.

It was curious, incidentally (but not really more curious than most
human affairs), that Pete (or Mr. Corcoran) whether he was merely
chaffing us, or whether he was really curious about a scarf of such
wanton colour scheme, should have mentioned it just when he did, for
as a matter of fact that tie had been on our mind all morning. You
see to-day being warm (and please remember that what we call