It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavor
of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots,
honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots.
The only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable
comment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening the
back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a word
he said), he chose between the purple scarf and a tapestry effect
with stringless brown harps among blown palms, and into it he thrust a
snake-head pin with opal eyes.

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the
contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were
of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They
included a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of
new leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without
them he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife,
silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he had
forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain was
a large, yellowish elk's-tooth-proclamation of his membership in the
Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks. Most significant of all was his
loose-leaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book
which contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent
memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinations
months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by
T. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt
got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things
which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription--D.S.S.
D.M.Y.P.D.F.

But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give him