“And I’m sure you’ll do it well,” said Mr. Boldero encouragingly. “There is no better training for modern commerce than a literary education. As a practical business man, I always uphold the ancient universities, especially in their teaching of the Humanities.” Gumbril was much flattered. At the moment, it seemed supremely satisfying to be told that he was likely to make a good business man. The business man took on a radiance, began to glow, as it were, with a phosphorescent splendour. “Then it’s very important,” continued Mr. Boldero, “to play on their snobbism; to exploit that painful sense of inferiority which the ignorant and ingenuous always feel in the presence of the knowing. We’ve got to make our trousers the Thing—socially right as well as merely personally comfortable. We’ve got to imply somehow that it’s bad form not to wear them. We’ve got to make those who don’t wear them feel rather uncomfortable. Like that film of Charlie Chaplin’s, where he’s the absent-minded young man about town who dresses for dinner immaculately, from the waist up—white waistcoat, tail coat, stiff shirt, top-hat—and only discovers, when he gets down into the hall of the hotel, that he’s forgotten to put on his trousers. We’ve got to make them feel like that. That’s always very successful. You know those excellent American advertisements about young ladies whose engagements are broken off because they perspire too freely or have an unpleasant breath? How horribly uncomfortable those make you feel! We’ve got to do something of the same sort for our trousers. Or more immediately applicable would be those tailor’s advertisements about correct clothes. ‘Good clothes make you feel good.’ You know the sort of line. And then those grave warning sentences in which you’re told that a correctly cut suit may make the difference between an appointment gained and an appointment lost, an interview granted and an interview refused. But the most masterly examples I can think of,” Mr. Boldero went on with growing enthusiasm, “are those American advertisements of spectacles, in which the manufacturers first assume the existence of a social law about goggles, and then proceed to invoke all the sanctions which fall on the head of the committer of a solecism upon those who break it. It’s masterly. For sport or relaxation, they tell you, as though it was a social axiom, you must wear spectacles of pure tortoiseshell. For business, tortoiseshell rims and nickel ear-pieces lend incisive poise—incisive poise, we must remember that for our ads, Mr. Gumbril. ‘Gumbril’s Patent Small-Clothes lend incisive poise to business men.’ For semi-evening dress, shell rims with gold ear-pieces and gold nose-bridge. And for full dress, gold-mounted rimless pince-nez are refinement itself, and absolutely correct. Thus we see, a social law has been created, according to which every self-respecting myope or astigmat must have four distinct pairs of glasses. Think if he should wear the