Talk of Bond Street and Fifth Avenue! Where will you find twenty-seven millinery shops in an almost unbroken row? What a multiplied vista of delight for feminine eyes--hats, hats, hats, as far as the eye can reach. Black hats and white hats; red, blue, and greenery-yallery hats; weird creations so loaded with gimp and passementerie as to certainly weigh a pound or more; daring confections in gauze and feathers; parterres of exotic blooms such as no earthly garden ever held; hats with bows on 'em and hats with birds on 'em, and hats with beasts on 'em; hats that twitter and hats that squawk; hats of lordly velvet and hats of plebeian corduroy; felt hats, straw hats, chip hats; wide brim and narrow brim; skewered, beribboned, bebowed--finally, again, just hats, hats, hats, a phantasmagoria of primary colors and gewgaws and fallalerie pure and simple, before which the masculine brain fairly reels. But the woman contemplates the show with serenity imperturbable: the hat she wants is here somewhere, and it is only a matter of time and patience to find it. There is always a Mont Blanc to overtop the lesser Alpine summits--a Koh-i-noor in whose splendor all inferior radiance is extinguished. Indiman touched my elbow. "Look at that one," he murmured. Now that WAS a hat. To describe it--but let me first bespeak the indulgence of my feminine readers. I am not an authority upon hats--most distinctly not; and I shall probably display my ignorance with the first word out of my mouth. But what matter. I am simply trying to tell of what these poor mortal eyes have seen. In effect, then, the foundation of the hat appeared to be a black straw, with a wide, straight brim, the trimming being a gimcrackery sort of material whose name for the moment has escaped me. Suppose we call it barege, and let it go at that? The principal ornament was a large, red apple in wax, pierced by a German-silver arrow, but the really unique feature of the entire creation was the parasol-like fringe that depended from the edge of the brim, a continuous row of four-inch filaments upon which shining black beads were closely strung. An over-bold device, perhaps, but it certainly caught the eye; there was a barbaric suggestion in those strings of glittering beads that made one think of the Congo and of tomtoms beating brazenly in the moonlight. A hat that WAS a hat, as I have previously remarked, and Indiman and I gazed upon it with undisguised interest. It is hardly necessary to add that this particular hat had the place of honor in the shop-window, it being mounted upon the waxen model of a simpering lady with flaxen curls and a complexion incomparable. Assuredly, then, the pearl of the collection. "L. Hernandez," said Indiman, reading the sign over the door. "Spanish Jew, I should say. Yes, and the Queen of Spades in person," he added, in an undertone, for L. Hernandez was standing in the open door-way of the shop and regarding us with a curious fixity of glance.