And before I realized that practically the whole affair had been
settled I was outside the consultation-room in a small private
hall, and the secretary was telling me further details would be
conveyed to me by mail. I went home in a dazed state. For the
first time I was beginning to learn something about an industry in
which heretofore I had never been interested. Especially was I
struck by the difference now revealed to me in the preliminary
stages of the surgeons' business as compared with their fellow
experts in the allied cutting trades--tailors, for instance, not
to mention barbers. Every barber, you know, used to be a surgeon,
only he spelled it chirurgeon. Since then the two professions
have drifted far apart. Even a half-witted barber--the kind who
always has the first chair as you come into the shop--can easily
spend ten minutes of your time thinking of things he thinks you
should have and mentioning them to you one by one, whereas any
good, live surgeon knows what you have almost instantly.

As for the tailor--consider how wearisome are his methods when
you parallel them alongside the tremendous advances in this direction
made by the surgeon--how cumbersome and old-fashioned and tedious!
Why, an experienced surgeon has you all apart in half the time the
tailor takes up in deciding whether the vest shall fasten with
five buttons or six. Our own domestic tailors are bad enough in
this regard and the Old World tailors are even worse.

I remember a German tailor in Aix-la-Chapelle in the fall of 1914
who undertook to build for me a suit suitable for visiting the
battle lines informally. He was the most literary tailor I ever
met anywhere. He would drape the material over my person and