I
would set up such a universal hunger for fur coats that the tradesmen in
Oxford Street and Regent Street would come and offer me a guinea a word to
write advertisements for them.
And yet I shall not buy a fur-lined coat, and I will tell you why. A fur
coat is not an article of clothing: it is a new way of life. You cannot say
with reckless prodigality, "Here, I will have a fur coat and make an end of
this gnawing passion." The fur coat is not an end: it is a beginning. You
have got to live up to it. You have got to take the fur-coat point of view
of your relations to society. When Chauncey Depew, as a boy, bought a
beautiful spotted dog at a fair and took it home, the rain came down and
the spots began to run into stripes. He took the dog back to the man of
whom he had bought it and demanded an explanation. "But you had an umbrella
with that dog," said the man. "No," said the boy. "Oh!" said the man,
"there's an umbrella goes with that dog."
And so it is with the fur-lined coat. So many things "go with it.
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