Now he
wears a fur-lined coat, drives his own motor-car, and has a man in livery
to receive you at the door. But the foundation of his fortunes were the
white spats. He understood that maxim of Rochefoucauld that "to succeed in
the world you must appear to have succeeded already," and the white spats
did the trick. I think he ought to pay for them--L2 a spat is my figure.
Most of us, too, I think, will agree that, if vanity is to be taxed, the
wearing of an eyeglass cannot be overlooked. It is impossible to dissociate
vanity from the use of the monocle. There are some people, it is true, who
wear an eyeglass naturally and unaffectedly, as though they were really
born with it and had forgotten that it was there. I saw a lady in a bus the
other day who used an eyeglass and yet carried it so well, with such simple
propriety and naturalness, that you could not feel that there was any
vanity in the matter. But that is an exception. Ordinarily the wearing of a
monocle seems like an announcement to the world that you are a person of
consequence.
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