He shook his head. "Nobody knows anything about hats." He added, very much in earnest, "Style is one of the great obscure mysteries of life." This had always been one of my observations, but one I have petulantly and impatiently deplored. I had never thought to hear it expressed with such heartfelt gravity and weight by a man of such evident vigor of personality. I said, laughing uneasily, "It makes one very self-conscious about one's own hat, to know oneself in the presence of such a connoisseur." He reassured me: "Oh, I never look at hats except in the way of business." In his turn he looked vague, and let his eyes wander, evidently much bored with my remarks. In another moment he would have turned away, but just then an acquaintance came up to me, addressing me by name, and my new interlocutor broke in with a quite human eagerness, "Oh, are you Mr. John P. Hulme's niece?" "Why, do you know my Uncle John?" I cried astonished. "He's one of the best business friends I have," he assured me, "and I have often seen the picture of you and the children he has on his desk. You must let me go to see them. I've got grown-up children of my own. It will be a real treat to me to know some American children here." In this casual manner, slipping in on the good graces of my little son and daughter, I entered a world the very existence of which I had never suspected, long and frequent as had been my sojourns in Paris; the world of hat-buyers. And I had for guide the very dean and master of the guild, to whom the younger aspirants looked up, whose sure, trained instinct was their despair and inspiration.