chamois skin rubber, but this is quite different and highly soothing.
You are beginning to really enjoy the sensation when she roguishly
pats the back of your hand--pitty pat--as a signal that the operation
is now over. You pay the check and tip the lady--tip her fifty
cents if you wish to be regarded as a lovely jumpman or only
twenty-five cents if you are satisfied with being a vurry nice
fella--and you secure your hat and step forth into the open with
the feeling of one who has taken a trip into a distant domain and
on the whole has rather enjoyed it.

You stand in the sunlight and waggle your fingers and you are
struck with the desirable glitter that flits from finger tip to
finger tip like a heleograph winking on a mountain top. It is
indeed a pleasing spectacle. You decide that hereafter you will
always glitter so. It is cheaper than wearing diamonds and much
more refined, and so you take good care of your fingers all that
day and carefully refrain from dipping them in the brine while
engaged in the well known indoor sport of spearing for dill
pickles at the business men's lunch.

But the next morning when you wake up the desirable glitter is
gone. You only glimmer dully--your fingers do not sparkle and
dazzle and scintillate as they did. As Francois Villon, the French
poet would undoubtedly have said had manicures been known at the
time he was writing his poems, "Where are the manicures of
yesterday?" instead of making it, "Where are the snows of
yesteryear?" there being no answer ready for either question, except
that the manicures of yesterday like the snows of yesteryear are
never there when you start looking for them. They have just
naturally got up and gone away, leaving no forwarding address.