makes on window panes. I submit the phenomenon of their strange origin to the scientific world as an instance of spontaneous generation.

This spotability of my gray suit is surpassed only by the achievements of my blue serge. (I shall not here discuss my English tweeds, nor my Scotch cheviots, nor the braided cutaway and the lounge suit that I had made for me in Bond Street, for fear the reader might divine that I never possessed those garments.) This suit is not a victim to spots—it deliberately invites them. It is a connoisseur, a discriminating collector.

Scorning such vulgarities as paint and pitch, it seeks the exotic, the outré—amazing stickinesses, bewildering viscosities, undreamed of goos.

Although delighting in intricacy of design and delicate nuances of shading, it prefers durability to all other qualities. Some of its antiques—particularly a brownish white one, resembling an octopus, over the front pocket—have stood the test of time and clothes brushes.

On three occasions this remarkable collection has been almost entirely destroyed by benzine, but each time the principal specimens have survived intact. These cleanings divide the history of the suit into four epochs.

Spots of the fourth (or present) epoch are of small consequence; spots of the third and second epochs are more interesting; while spots which antedate the first great deluge are quite rare. Among these last are the octopus and other gems of the collection.

Once, when I had become exceedingly irked at having to go about clad in pseudo-tapestry, I handed the suit over to a desperado of a ladies' and gents' tailor—a man who had the reputation of being capable of getting anything out of anything or anybody—and besought him to raze the frescoes.

He attacked them after the manner customary to cleaners; that is to say, he drove out the spots with smells. Only, he used smells that were nothing short of brutal. The rout was complete.

When he brought the suit to my room on Saturday night, I could hardly believe my eyes. Being forced, however, to believe my nose, I hastily opened the window. I could understand why the spots had departed. I even felt sorry for them.

Not daring to put the suit away, for fear of contaminating the rest of my apparel, I hung it over the back of a chair by the window.

But the incoming breeze, instead of carrying the aroma away, wafted it directly toward me. It was certainly strong. It fairly assaulted the nostrils. One good whiff of that vicious chemical was almost enough to make you dizzy.

It treated me as if I were a spot.

I picked up a book and tried to read, but could not concentrate my attention.

The spot-destroyer was continually interrupting. My head was spinning so that I could hardly see.

I realized that the life of a spot was not a happy one.

Thinking that smoking might help, I was about to light a cigarette when I remembered reading in the papers of people who struck matches in fume-filled rooms and then were blown blocks and blocks without knowing what hit them. So I gave that up, and sat a while dejected.

Then another scary thought came into my mind. What if I should be asphyxiated? I pictured myself being found dead in bed, having been extinct for hours and hours, and the mournfulness of it broke me all up.

Overcome with emotion and spot-destroyer, I gathered a few things into a suitcase and went out to spend the night at a hotel.

When I returned to my room on the following evening the aroma had gone, and the rays of the setting sun, illuminating the old blue suit as it hung there on the back of the chair, showed me a host of familiar faces—particularly that of an especially offensive brownish-white octopus over the pocket. They had come back every one; not a design was missing.

SHELF CULTURE

A man of education and refinement like you needs books befitting your culture—your place in the world," said my visitor. He spoke as though he were a revered friend of the family. But actually he was not just that. I had never seen him before. He was honoring me with a call at my room on Freshman Row.

I had come to college to get in touch with Belles-Lettres, and, lo, Belles-Lettres were seeking me out! Recognition had come far sooner than I had hoped.

To appreciate what I felt, you must know that Belles-Lettres' ambassador was no ordinary person. He had the clothes of a clubman, the benignity of a clergyman, and the dignity of an undertaker. There was scholarliness in the droop of the pinch glasses on his aquiline nose and as he talked he kept lifting his curiously arched eyebrows in a manner that fascinated the beholder.

From the subject of my culture in its broader aspects he progressed by easy gradations to my culture in its relation to the works of Hawthorne and Irving, the two authors indispensable to a man of discerning taste, the authors whose writings constituted the logical nucleus of the well-bred student's library. He was happy to be able to tell me of the rare opportunity that now lay in my grasp of acquiring the immortal and exhilarating works of both these masters at one and the same time—in one and the same set.

The urgency of my need for Hawthorne and Irving being thus established beyond the shadow of a hesitance, the only thing for me to decide fairly and squarely was whether they should come to me in blue half-morocco or in red buckram. The splendid showing that either set would make in my bookcase was attested by the accordion-plaited binding sample which at the proper moment he produced and unfolded. Nearly a yard of titled book-backs!

I signed on the dotted line and accepted his congratulations, while he accepted my two dollar deposit.

About a week later the box arrived. Eagerly I lifted forth the magic volumes which were to put me on a new intellectual plane. Somehow the bindings seemed to need breaking in. They creaked and cracked at the hinges and the pages clung together in little groups clannishly. The gluing of the backs was queer, yet casual. The "hand" that had tinted the "elegant colored frontispieces" was evidently a heavy one.

No matter: Hawthorne and Irving were mine. I had been taken into the higher circles of culture.

That very evening I plunged into "Mosses from an Old Manse". I stuck at it. Each day I balanced my morning's Shredded Wheat with Hawthorne Mosses at night, till the entire volume had been systematically consumed. Then, having created my new literary universe, I rested.

Today no one can stump me on Mosses. Mention the Old Manse to me and my whole manner changes. My face lights up with intelligence. My eyes sparkle. My nostrils dilate like those of an old fire engine horse at the clang of an alarm gong. Yes, right this minute I can give you moss for moss.

If only I had gone on and read all the other volumes of the set.... Who knows? I might now be dean of a college or a second Dr. Frank Crane. Alas, I continued to rest on my Mosses, arguing sophistically with my conscience that these books, the nucleus of my ultimate library, were precious possessions not necessarily for immediate perusal. Time-defying classics like Hawthorne and Irving would keep and be equally enjoyable years hence, if not more so; in fact, it would be almost extravagant to use them all up