America Moved. Booth Tarkington
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said so.
The Marks of a Dude
A new word had begun to appear in the American vocabulary, supplanting “fop,” “swell,” and “dandy.” This word signified the disappearance of an old type of exquisite gentleman and the emergence of a novel creature among us, called the “dude.” The previous sample, the swell, had been given to long Dundreary side whiskers, velvet jackets, loose pantaloons, and wide open collars. The dude was marked particularly by the extreme height of his round white cylinder of a collar, by the spoon-shaped crown of his hard hat, by his razor-pointed shoes, by the flare of the skirts of his Chesterfield black frock coat, by the shortness of his fawn overcoat, and, above all, by such tightness of his trousers that no one could explain how he got his feet through them. It was important, too, that the trousers should show no crease, for a crease disgracefully proved the garment to be a “hand-me-down”—that is, not made by a tailor, but handed down from the shelf of a shop where ready-made clothes were kept folded.
Dudes appeared spontaneously, it seemed, upon the streets of cities all over the country, increasing in numbers just after the commencements of the Eastern colleges. The dudes carried slim, twirly canes and were regarded by the sturdier population as insufferable because of their clothes and because they smoked cigarettes. It was thought permissible for children to prance burlesquingly behind a sample of this new species on the street, squawking, “Yay, come look at the dude! Look at the dude! Look at the dude!”
I didn’t wish to be a dude precisely; I only hoped to be well dressed. My new long trousers were moderate, not skintight, and my Youth’s First Base collars were only an inch high, whereas a true dude’s collar was sometimes thrice that. On the other hand, it’s true I may have taken some pride in feeling that a Youth’s First Base was perhaps a little bit dude-ish, and no doubt my manner became rather self-consciously youthly. Anyhow, I laid myself open to a criticism I received one day from a volunteer.
I was returning from an errand downtown when the converging perspective of the sidewalk revealed in the distance the figures of three boys coming from the opposite direction. Perceiving these to be strangers to me, I had a nervous flutter in the chest and hoped that they would turn into a cross street instead of coming to a near view of me. Most grown men have forgotten and few women ever know, I suppose, what a boy feels when he sees even one other boy, a stranger, approaching on the same side of the street. No more than a dog who sees a strange dog coming does either boy know what is going to happen; and, both with boys and dogs, anything may. Even at thirteen the passage may become an encounter; at the best it will be an embarrassment.
The three approaching figures, three times worse than one, didn’t turn into a side street, and, as they drew nearer, I perceived them to be wholly undude-ish, sturdy fellows and already too much interested in me. Rabbit-minded, I thought of crossing to the opposite sidewalk; but in their look I read that it would be a tactical error, so I came on slowly, frowning as if preoccupied with business computations. When we were almost face to face I courteously made way, gave them the sidewalk, and moved out to the curbstone to pass them; but they impeded me. The smallest of the three placed his distended chest unpleasantly against me.
Of my age, though shorter than I, he was so sternly assured of himself and so iron of morale that even had he lacked the backing of his larger friends he might have been able to impose his will upon me. He had a lumpily modeled face which, as he pressed it upon me, was scarlet with a manly fury. He breathed loudly and his voice loosed the violence of an offended person who knows his right to resent gratuitous injury.
“You listen!” he said. “I can tell all about you by just lookin’ at you and it makes me mad! It’d make this whole town mad just to look at you! You try to be a dude, but you ain’t. You think that’s a dude’s collar, but it ain’t. I wouldn’t even laugh at it! You want to be a dude, but it ain’t in you. Go on home and give up!”
I said nothing; he seemed to be unanswerable, and by no means did I realize that I was having a peculiar experience in which I should have been interested not only as a participant but as an observer. Rarely indeed does anybody come in contact with a critical faculty so roused as to demonstrate to a stranger that his mere outward appearance makes people actually angry.
“Go on home!” the stern boy said, with imperious gestures. “Go on and quit tryin’ to look like somebody. Go on; you hear me? Go home!”
I went, not looking back. I was impaired, vacant inside, and feared that my face, as well as my clothes, offered a too visible stimulant to such estimates of me. Besides this impulsive critic, maybe a whole lot of other people, when they happened to see me, felt a pressure to relieve themselves similarly. Life, it began to seem, could at any moment become startlingly unfavorable. One went about one’s business—which might be no more than to walk absently in the sunshine of a placid day—then suddenly, out of nowhere, there might be in the path something that wanted to bite. The sensations I endured that afternoon were to be many, many times undergone later in my life until what is called “philosophy” should come to the rescue; for, though I then little suspected it, I was to follow one of those callings that of their very nature bring not one but a horde of critics, seemingly out of nowhere, to beset the path indignantly.
“. . . And one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages”; but I think seventy would be truer—if the man live so long—and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen are among the most ignominious of all the ages.
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