bow, looked like a gentleman--the fashionable novelist's idea of a
gentleman. Upon myself the result was otherwise, suggesting always a
feeble attempt at suicide by strangulation. I could never understand
how it was done. There were moments when it flashed across me that
the secret lay in being able to turn one's self inside out, coming up
with one's arms and legs the other way round. Standing on one's head
might have surmounted the difficulty; but the higher gymnastics
Nature has denied to me. "The Boneless Wonder" or the "Man Serpent"
could, I felt, be a gentleman so easily. To one to whom has been
given only the common ordinary joints gentlemanliness is apparently
an impossible ideal.

It is not only the tie. I never read the fashionable novel without
misgiving. Some hopeless bounder is being described:

"If you want to know what he is like," says the Peer of the Realm,
throwing himself back in his deep easy-chair, and puffing lazily at
his cigar of delicate aroma, "he is the sort of man that wears three
studs in his shirt."

[The difficulty of being a Gentleman.]

Merciful heavens! I myself wear three studs in my shirt. I also am
a hopeless bounder, and I never knew it. It comes upon me like a
thunderbolt. I thought three studs were fashionable. The idiot at
the shop told me three studs were all the rage, and I ordered two
dozen. I can't afford to throw them away. Till these two dozen
shirts are worn out, I shall have to remain a hopeless bounder.

Why have we not a Minister of the Fine Arts? Why does not a paternal