in buying new shirts and handkerchiefs and embroidered
braces, in looking over the various stocks of razors,
toilet articles, studs and sleeve-links, and the like,
and telling the gratified tradesmen to give him the best
of everything--this delight had been distinctively boyish.
He doubted, indeed, if any mere youth could have risen
to the heights of tender satisfaction from which he
reflected upon the contents of his portmanteaus.
To apprehend their full value one must have been without them
for such a weary time! He had this wonderful advantage--that
he supplemented the fresh-hearted joy of the youth in
nice things, with the adult man's knowledge of how bald
existence could be without them. It was worth having
lived all those forty obscure and mostly unpleasant years,
for this one privilege now of being able to appreciate
to the uttermost the touch of double-silk underwear.

It was an undoubted pity that there had not been time to go
to a good tailor. The suit he had on was right enough for
ordinary purposes, and his evening-clothes were as good as new,
but the thought of a costume for shooting harassed his mind.
He had brought along with him, for this eventful visit,
an old Mexican outfit of yellowish-grey cloth and leather,
much the worse for rough wear, but saved from the disreputable
by its suggestion of picturesque experiences in a strange
and romantic country. At least it had seemed to him,
in the morning, when he had packed it, to be secure
in this salvation. Uneasy doubts on the subject had
soon risen, however, and they had increased in volume
and poignancy as his conceptions of a wardrobe expanded