of William Faversham and throwing the coat lapels back, at the same
time resting the left hand clenched upon the upper thigh with the
elbow well out--Donald Brian asking a lady to waltz--and offering
the right hand to the favored female and telling her to go as far
as she likes with it. It sounds simple when you figuring it out
alone, but it rarely works out that way in practice. It is my
belief that every woman longs for the novelty of a Turkish bath
and every man for the novelty of a manicure long before either
dares to tackle it. I may be wrong but this is my belief. And
in the case of the man he usually makes a number of false starts.

You go to the portals and hesitate and then, stumbling across the
threshold, you either dive on through to the barber shop--if there
is a barber shop in connection--or else you mumble something about
being in a hurry and coming back again, and retreat with all the
grace and ease that would be shown by a hard shell crab that was
trying to back into the mouth of a milkbottle. You are likely to
do this several times; but finally some day you stick. You slump
down into one of those little chairs and offer your hands or one
of them to a calm and slightly arrogant looking young lady and you
tell her to please shine them up a little. You endeavor to appear
as though you had been doing this at frequent periods stretching
through a great number of years, but she--bless her little heart!--
she knows better than that. The female of the manicuring species
is not to be deceived by any such cheap and transparent artifices.
If you wore a peekaboo waist she couldn't see through you any
easier. Your hands would give you away if your face didn't. In
a sibulent aside, she addresses the young lady at the next table--
the one with the nine bracelets and the hair done up delicatessen
store mode--sausages, rolls and buns--whereupon both of them laugh