RECONSTRUCTION.

Phil devoted part of the next day to studying well-dressed business-men in the streets. Thanks to well-trained perceptive faculties, and also to some large mirrors which he accidentally encountered, he soon learned why his attire had attracted attention. Then he compared clothing-stores for an hour, finally entered one and asked how long it would take to make a well-fitting every-day suit. The salesman looked him over, and replied,—

“Fit you at once, from our ready-made stock. Never any trouble to fit a good figure.”

Phil could have hugged that salesman. Here, at least, was some one who did not intimate that he was from the country; and yet, perhaps, a good figure was a country product. He would think about this, as soon as business was off his mind. The salesman certainly fitted him to perfection. Phil scarcely recognized himself when asked to look in the glass.

“Don’t think you could do better,” said the veteran salesman, surveying Phil from rapidly-changing points of view, “if you were to have yourself melted and poured into a suit. The tone of that goods is rather cold, but you’ve plenty of color. I think, though, to set it off to the best advantage you need to{53} change your black tie for a scarf with a touch of red or yellow in it: if you don’t happen to have one, you’ll find a fine assortment in our gents’ furnishing department. Needs a somewhat different style of shirt-collar, too: let some furnishing-goods man cast his eye over your neck. You always wear your hair pretty long, I suppose?—well, it’s a pity it don’t set off a man’s clothes as well as it sometimes does his face.”

Phil resolved at once to have his hair cut. Under the guidance of the salesman he had his neck-wear changed; then the old man said,—

“Those low-crowned straight-brimmed hats used to look exactly right with the clothes of that season, but somehow they don’t harmonize with the cut of this year. Hats are cheap, though, and there are two or three good dealers on the other side of the street, a little farther down. Keep this suit on, I suppose? All right, sir: I’ll do up the others. H’m!”—here the old man scrutinized the material of the coat made by Sarah Tweege,—“that’s splendid stuff. Great shame ’twas cut sack-fashion. There isn’t much stuff as good as that in swallow-tails nowadays.”

“Couldn’t it—I suppose it couldn’t be made over into a party coat?”

“H’m!—scarcely,—scarcely,” said the salesman, controlling his features as well as if the question were the most natural in the world. “Not enough stuff, you see; too short; sleeves not full enough; button-holes in wrong places; lapels too narrow. Besides, velvet collars have gone out. Any time you need a dress-suit, though, we’ve got a boss artist who{54} can cut it so as to do you justice. ’Tisn’t often he gets a good figure to spread himself on.”

Again Phil was profoundly grateful: he wanted to do something for that salesman, and after some thought he astonished the old fellow by thanking him for his attention and promising to send him a barrel of selected Newtown pippins. Then he placed himself in the hands of the boss artist, who studied him as if he were a model, measured him, and asked him if he needed his dress-suit at once.

“Yes; right away,” said Phil. “I can’t get it too soon. I want——” He had begun to tell that he meant to dress himself in that suit and practise before a mirror until fully satisfied that he did not look unlike other men. The boss artist told him to return in three days; then the old salesman, who had remained in attendance, remarked,—

“You have a thin fall overcoat, I suppose?”

“Oh, I won’t need an overcoat for a month yet. Why, there hasn’t been a bit of frost up our way.” Phil was already appalled by the extent of his order.

“True enough,” said the salesman, “but it doesn’t do to go out in a dress-suit without an overcoat, you know, unless you’re merely stepping from your door to a carriage; and it’s hardly the thing even then.”

“Why, Judge Dickman——”

“Oh, yes, those old judges, who wear swallow-tails day in and day out, can do it; nothing wrong about it, of course,—only a matter of taste; but a young fellow don’t like to make himself conspicuous, you know.”

Phil meekly purchased an overcoat, and hurried{55} away with a heavy load on his conscience. More than three-quarters of the hundred dollars his father had given him was already gone or mortgaged; he had meant to spend none of it, except for some things which he knew his mother craved. Fortunately, he had brought some savings of his own; and, as he informed himself, hair-cutting was not an expensive operation, and the clothing-salesman had told him that new hats did not cost much. He had nothing else to spend money for, except a watch-chain; his father had told him to buy one. Indeed, had not his father told him to buy clothes?—“lots of them,” were the old gentleman’s exact words. But could his father have known about evening suits and fall overcoats?

Phil continued in this vein of thought after he had dropped into a barber’s chair, but was startled out of it by finding a lather-brush passing over his face. He struggled, and exclaimed,—

“I wanted my hair cut.”

“Yes, sir, so I heard you say; but when shaving has to be done too we like to have that out of the way first. But I beg your pardon, perhaps you were raising a beard?”

“No,” said Phil, settling himself again in the chair. At Haynton young men shaved only on Saturday nights; Phil himself had shaved only three days before, yet here was another unexpected expense imposed upon him by New York custom. Half an hour afterward he emerged from that shop with the not entirely satisfactory assurance that his oldest friend would not know him at sight: and when he had bought a new hat and surveyed himself in a{56} long mirror he was not certain that he would know himself if he were to encounter another mirror by accident. The replacement of his hard-rubber watch-guard by a thin chain plated with gold completed the metamorphosis, and a bootblack whose services he declined set his mind at rest by calling him a dude.

What next to do he scarcely knew. An inclination to go back to the sloop and see how Sol Mantring was getting along at discharging the cargo was suppressed by the thought of what Sol and the crew would say if they saw him in his new suit. The countryman has some grand qualities that denizens of cities would do well to imitate, but not all his moral courage can keep him from feeling uncomfortable when first he displays himself in new clothes to old associates. Country youths have sometimes run away from home,—gone to sea, the city, the devil—anywhere—rather than undergo this dreadful ordeal.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he was not far from Tramlay’s office: he might make a call, if only to show that he could, with proper facilities, look unlike a countryman. Besides, he wanted to know all about the iron business, about which he had seen so many contradictory assertions in the newspapers.

He entered the store and walked back toward the railed counting-room in which he saw the head of Haynton’s recent summer boarder. A clerk asked him his business; he replied that he had merely dropped in to see Mr. Tramlay. The head of the establishment looked at Phil without recognition when this information was imparted, and advanced{57} with a somewhat impatient air, which suddenly changed to cordiality as he exclaimed,—

“Why, my dear fellow! excuse me. I didn’t recognize you at first: we can’t all of us have young eyes, you know. Come in; sit down; make yourself at home. I’m glad you dropped in: I’m going out to lunch pretty soon, and I do hate to lunch alone.”

Phil soon found himself coaxed and assisted to a high office-stool at a desk by the window, and all the morning papers placed before him, while Tramlay said,—

“Look at the paper two or three minutes while I straighten out a muddle in a customer’s letter; then we’ll go out.”

Phil took up a paper; the advertising page—which happened to be the first—was very interesting, nevertheless Phil’s eyes wandered, for his mind was just then curious about the iron trade. He looked around him for indications of the business; but the only bit of iron in sight was a paper-weight on the desk before him. Closer scrutiny was rewarded by the discovery of a bit of angle-iron, a few inches long, lying on a window-sill. In the mean time the proprietor had scribbled a few lines, assorted some papers, and closed his desk by drawing down the top. Then he said,—

“Now let’s go in search of peace and comfort.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d have to leave your office for that,” said Phil, who had found the counting-room greatly unlike what he had expected.

“There’s no peace where business is going on,” Tramlay replied; “although I don’t know, after{58} careful thought, of any noisier place than a New York restaurant. Here we are. Come in.”

Phil found himself in one of the very large and noisy places where New York business-men herd about noonday. Phil protested, in the usual rural manner, that he was not at all hungry, but Tramlay ordered so skilfully that both were duly occupied for an hour. Phil found his host attentive, yet occasionally absent-minded. He might have spared himself the trouble of making a mental memorandum to study out the why and wherefore of this apparently incongruous pair of qualities had he known that Tramlay was cudgelling his brain to know how to dispose of his rural visitor after dinner, without offending. While they were sipping the coffee,—a beverage which Phil had never before tasted in the middle of the day,—Mr. Marge lounged up to them, looking exactly as intelligent, listless, and unchangeable as the night before.

“How are you, Marge?” said Tramlay. Phil afterward wondered that his host could smile so genially on so cold a person.

“As usual,” replied Marge, with a slight inclination of the head. “Good-morning, Mr. Hayn. Don’t let me interrupt conversation. I merely meant to say I’ve nothing to do this afternoon, and would be glad to show Mr. Hayn about town a little, if he likes.”

“That’s ever so good of you,” said Tramlay; “for the truth is, I was wondering how I could find time to do it myself, and fearing I couldn’t.”

“Entirely at his service,” said Marge, as lifelessly as an automaton.{59}

“And both come and dine with me this evening,” suggested Tramlay: “entirely informal, you know.”

“I should be delighted,” said Marge, in his unvarying manner.

Tramlay hurried to his office, after the briefest of leave-takings, and Marge began to conduct Phil about New York. Soon, however, there developed a marked difference of taste between visitor and guide. Marge wanted to show the young man the Stock Exchange, which to the many minds composing a very large class has no rival attraction except the various institutions on Blackwell’s Island; Phil exhibited abject ignorance and indifference regarding the Stock Exchange, but wanted to go through the Sub-Treasury and Assay Office,—two buildings in which Marge had never been. Marge made a special trip to show the young man the outside of Jay Gould’s office, but Phil identified Trinity Church from pictures he had seen, and wanted to make a patriotic tour of the tombs of distinguished men of the Revolutionary period. Marge offered to introduce Phil to Russell Sage, but was amazed to learn that the young man had never heard of that distinguished individual. When, however, General Hancock, passing by, was casually pointed out by Marge, Phil stopped short and stared respectfully. Marge showed the Field Building, but through the trees in front Phil correctly surmised he saw Castle Garden, and desired at once to go there and be made acquainted with the method of receiving and distributing immigrants. On the Produce Exchange they fairly agreed, Marge admitting that in importance it ranked next to the{60} Stock Exchange, while Phil was able to regard it as a great business necessity. Pretending to search, by Phil’s request, for the building in which Washington bade farewell to his generals, Marge succeeded in getting back through Broad Street to the vicinity of the Stock Exchange, where he tried to atone for his failure by pointing out through a window the head of Mr. Henry Clews; but Phil had no eyes except for the statue of Washington, standing, as he knew, on the site of the first President’s first inaugural. The two men exhibited equal interest, on half a dozen successive occasions, in “stock-tickers,” which Marge seemed to know how to find in all sorts of places; but, while Marge looked over the quotations on the tape, Phil studied the machinery of the indicator itself.

The strain upon Marge became almost too great for his self-control, and he breathed a sigh of relief when Trinity’s clock struck three. To have left the vicinity of the Stock Exchange earlier would never have occurred to him, but promptly on the stroke he hurried Phil to an elevated-railway station and uptown to a stable, where he had his horse and wagon brought out and took Phil for a drive in Central Park. Probably there he thought he could be entertained after his own manner, for he had the reins. Driving out Fifth Avenue, the two men really became congenial for a little while, for Phil understood horses, and Marge’s horse was a good one, and Phil admired him and knew of a good horse that would match him nicely, and Marge saw a prospect of making a team that he could sell at a large profit,{61} and Phil promised to arrange that Marge should come out and see the horse. But even this conversation was broken when Marge pointed out the late residence of A. T. Stewart, for Phil insisted upon moralizing on riches. In the Park he asked questions about statues, and about trees and shrubs that were new to him and equally unknown to Marge, as well as utterly uninteresting; Phil also wanted a number of facts and figures about the Reservoir in the Park, and was with difficulty restrained from spoiling the drive by visiting the menagerie. Finally, when he demanded the exact sites of the various engagements on Manhattan Island between the British and Washington, after the latter had been forced to evacuate what then was New York, Marge abruptly turned and drove homeward, confessing without the faintest show of shame, but rather with defiance, that he knew absolutely nothing about those times. And when the drive ended and the couple separated, the elder man’s face broke from its customary calm as he muttered to himself,—

“What can Tramlay want of that fellow?”