Humorous stories; Valets -- Fiction; Washington (State) -- Fiction
Presently, then, my charge and I set out for what I hoped was to be a
peaceful and instructive day among objects of art, though first I was
obliged to escort him to a hatter’s and glover’s to remedy some minor
discrepancies in his attire. He was very pleased when I permitted him
to select his own hat. I was safe in this, as the shop was really
artists in gentlemen’s headwear, and carried only shapes, I observed,
that were confined to exclusive firms so as to insure their being worn
by the right set. As to gloves and a stick, he was again rather
pettish and had to be set right with some firmness. He declared he had
lost his stick and gloves of the previous day. I discovered later that
he had presented them to the lift attendant. But I soon convinced him
that he would not be let to appear without these adjuncts to a
gentleman’s toilet.
Then, having once more stood by at the barber’s while he was shaved
and his moustaches firmly waxed anew, I saw that he was fit at last
for his art studies. The barber this day suggested curling the
moustaches with a heated iron, but at this my charge fell into so
unseemly a rage that I deemed it wise not to insist. He, indeed,
bluntly threatened a nameless violence to the barber if he were so
much as touched with the iron, and revealed an altogether shocking
gift for profanity, saying loudly: “I’ll be--dashed--if you will!” I
mean to say, I have written “dashed” for what he actually said. But at
length I had him once more quieted.
“Now, sir,” I said, when I had got him from the barber’s shop, to the
barber’s manifest relief: “I fancy we’ve time to do a few objects of
art before luncheon. I’ve the book here for your comments,” I added.
“Quite so,” he replied, and led me at a rapid pace along the street in
what I presumed was the direction of the art museum. At the end of a
few blocks he paused at one of those open-air public houses that
disgracefully line the streets of the French capital. I mean to say
that chairs and tables are set out upon the pavement in the most
brazen manner and occupied by the populace, who there drink their
silly beverages and idle away their time. After scanning the score or
so of persons present, even at so early an hour as ten of the morning,
he fell into one of the iron chairs at one of the iron tables and
motioned me to another at his side.
When I had seated myself he said “Beer” to the waiter who appeared,
and held up two fingers.
“Now, look at here,” he resumed to me, “this is a good place to do
about four pages of art, and then we can go out and have some
recreation somewhere.” Seeing that I was puzzled, he added: “This
way--you take that notebook and write in it out of this here other
book till I think you’ve done enough, then I’ll tell you to stop.” And
while I was still bewildered, he drew from an inner pocket a small,
well-thumbed volume which I took from him and saw to be entitled “One
Hundred Masterpieces of the Louvre.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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