hideous with gaudy insurance show-cards in sham gilt frames, its aspect
was so revolting that I flew to the day-book for distraction, and was
still busily entering the morning's visits when the bottle-boy,
Adolphus, entered stealthily to announce lunch.




CHAPTER III

JOHN THORNDYKE


That the character of an individual tends to be reflected in his dress
is a fact familiar to the least observant. That the observation is
equally applicable to aggregates of men is less familiar, but equally
true. Do not the members of the fighting professions, even to this day,
deck themselves in feathers, in gaudy colours and gilded ornaments,
after the manner of the African war-chief or the "Redskin brave," and
thereby indicate the place of war in modern civilisation? Does not the
Church of Rome send her priests to the altar in habiliments that were
fashionable before the fall of the Roman Empire, in token of her
immovable conservatism? And, lastly, does not the Law, lumbering on in
the wake of progress, symbolise its subjection to precedent by head-gear
reminiscent of the days of good Queen Anne?

I should apologise for obtruding upon the reader these somewhat trite
reflections; which were set going by the quaint stock-in-trade of the
wig-maker's shop in the cloisters of the Inner Temple, whither I had
strayed on a sultry afternoon in quest of shade and quiet. I had halted