For some time now I’ve judged people by the objects they lug around, hold dear and find attractive. These things comprise a “biographical essay” about their entire being! For instance, I am highly suspicious of men who tote around walking sticks with oxidized silver handles that represent something or other, like a dog’s head, a snake or even a ravishing little curly headed damsel. Of course, these fellows can resort to the excuse that they got it as a gift from a dear friend; but first of all, no one ought not to have such tasteless friends (two negatives, alas, make a positive), and second, you can also take a friend’s gift and knock him on the head with it. In any case, among cultivated people, I’m for the exchange of “coupons” in any given transaction! I’m also suspect of pink, light blue and screaming red silk, whereas satin, velvet or damask are to be counted among the “mild infractions against common decency.” Printed, not woven, ties are cause for considerable concern, although the “nature-peasant pattern” is a pardonable sin. To be dressed “in a single color” from head to toe is the “latest Aristocratic craze,” 1913! An open neck is highborn. High collars are nonsense, except for storks. Not to be able to make all the twists and turns of a first class acrobat from the “Apollo Theater” in any given garb is positively low class! Trousers can never be wide enough and are still far too tight! To leave the bottom button of a waistcoat open is a miserable lapse of etiquette. To anyone who claims he doesn’t want to appear too conspicuous I respectfully reply that even Beethoven’s Adagios were conspicuous, conspicuously beautiful! “In all things we must distinguish ourselves from the horde!” “That’s what they’re wearing these days—!” is dirty low-down drivel.
“Good morning, Sir, how’s the world treating you?!” I said to a stranger strolling up the “Upper Semmering Pathway” in a top hat.
“Very well indeed in this lovely mountain terrain; but from where, may I ask, do you know me?”
“I know you like the back of my hand since the day you were born, as I see you’ve donned a top hat here—.”
“I owe that to my position in the world, my good man—.”
“I was immediately struck by that too, that you owe something or other to someone or other—!”