"This is the last time you will see me here. My lease expires to-morrow and my experience as a retail merchant, in fact, as any sort of merchant, is over. On this, the last evening that we shall meet in the old familiar way, the story I have to relate to your indulgent ears is of some adventures of my own, adventures which have had their final culmination in a manner most delightful to me, and in which consummation you have been an agent. Indeed, but for your friendship I should not now be the happy man I am. Without further consuming time by a preamble which the progress of the tale will render unnecessary, I will proceed.
"Last summer, I spent a portion of the heated term at Green Lake, Wisconsin. I know that sentiment in this city is somewhat unequally divided upon the question of the comparative charms of Green Lake and Lake Geneva and that the former resort has not acquired a vogue equal to that of the latter, but I must say I greatly prefer Green Lake. I have never been at Lake Geneva, it is true, but nevertheless, I prefer Green Lake.
"The hotel where I stayed was very well filled and the manager was enjoying a highly prosperous season. Yet though there were so many people there I made no acquaintances in the first week of my sojourn. Nor in the second week did I come to know more than three or four, and they but slightly. I was, in truth, treated somewhat as an object of suspicion, the cause of which I could not at first imagine. I was newer to this country and its customs and costumes there a year ago. Previous to starting for the lake, I had purchased of a firm of clothiers farther up this street, Poppenheimer and Pappenheimer, a full outfit for all occasions and sports incident upon a vacation at a fashionable resort. I had not then learned that one can seldom make a more fatal mistake than to allow a clothier or tailor to choose for you. It is true that these gentry have in stock what persons of refinement demand, but they also have fabrics and garments bizarre in color and cut, in which they revel and carry for apparently no other reason than the delectation of their own perverted taste, since they seldom or never sell them. But at times they light upon some one whose ignorance or easy-going disposition makes him a prey, and they send him forth an example of what they call a well-dressed man. More execrably dressed men than Poppenheimer and Pappenheimer and most of the other parties in the clothing business, are seldom to be found in other walks of life. In my ignorance of American customs, I entrusted myself to their hands with the result that my garments were exaggerated in pattern and style and altogether unsuited to my dark complexion and slim figure. But in the wearing of these garments I aggravated the original sartorial offence into a sartorial crime. With my golf trousers and white ducks I wore a derby hat. For nearly a week I wore with a shirt waist a pair of very broad blue silk suspenders embroidered in red. All at once I awoke to a realization that the others did not wear their clothes as I did and set myself to imitate them with the result that my clothes were at least worn correctly. The mischief was largely done, however, before this reform, and nothing I could do would alter the cut and fabric.