Transcriber’s Note
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By ELLIS PARKER BUTLER
Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” etc.
Illustrations by ALBERT LEVERING
SPECIAL EDITION
The Q and C Co.
NEW YORK AND CHICAGO
3
By Ellis Parker Butler
Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” etc.
Illustrations by Albert Levering
The idea of a gyro-hat did not come to me all at once,as some great ideas come to inventors; and in fact Imay say that but for a most unpleasant circumstanceI might never have thought of gyro-hats at all, althoughI had for many years been considering the possibilityof utilizing the waste space in the top of silk hats insome way or other. As a practical hat dealer andlover of my kind, it had always seemed to me a greateconomical waste to have a large vacant space insidethe upper portion of top hats, or high hats, or “stovepipe”hats, as they are variously called. When a shoeis on, it is full of foot, and when a glove is on, it is fullof hand; but a top hat is not, and never can be, full ofhead, until such a day as heads assume a cylindricalshape, perfectly flat on top. And no sensible man everexpects that day to come.
I had, therefore, spent much of my leisure in devisingmethods by which the vacant space above the head inhigh hats might be turned to advantage, and mypatents ranged all the way from a small filing cabinetthat just occupied the waste space, to an extensiblehat rack on the accordion plan that could be pushed4compactly into the top of the top hat when the hatwas worn, but could be extended into a hat and coatrack when the hat was not in use. This device shouldhave been very popular, but I may say that the publicreceived the idea coldly.
My attention had been for some time drawn awayfrom this philanthropic work by certain symptoms ofuneasiness I noticed in my daughter Anne, and mywife and I decided after careful consideration thatAnne must be in love, and that her love must beunhappy. Otherwise we could not account for thestrange excitability of our usually imperturbabledaughter. As a practical hat dealer my time has beenalmost exclusively devoted to hats and, as a good wife,my companion’s attention has been almost exclusivelydevoted to her husband, while Anne was usually socalm and self-contained that she did not take my attentionfrom my hat business at all. But when such adaughter suddenly develops signs of weeping and sighsand general nervousness, any father, no matter howdevoted to the hat trade, must pay attention.
One of the primary necessities of a dealer in goodhats is calm. An ordinary hat dealer may not needcalm. He may buy his hats as another dealer buys flour,in the bulk, and then trust to advertisements to sellthem; but I am not that kind of hat dealer. Hat dealingis an art with me, and great art requires calm andpeace in order that it may reach its highest development.5When I buy hats I do not t