Читать книгу My Ten Years in a Quandary - Robert C Benchley - Страница 17

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I have a white suit which I am either going to give away or have dipped. I can't seem quite to swing it.

Other men wear white suits in Summer and it doesn't seem to bother them. But my white suit seems to be a little whiter than theirs. I think also that it may have something written on the back of it, although I can't find it when I take the suit off.

Maybe I don't put it on right. I am sure that all the buttons are buttoned in their proper order, but it doesn't seem to hang as it should. The man who made it for me seemed satisfied, but I think that he was in a hurry to get home. In it I have the feeling of being a sky-writer who can't spell.

I put it on and get as far as the front door, where I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. If I didn't know otherwise I would think that I had been wired for electricity and that at eight o'clock the President was going to press a button lighting me up for the San Diego Exposition.

* * * * *

Once out in the daylight I either come back into the house and change or rush into a taxi and crouch in the darkest corner. If, through sheer bravado, I walk, little children run away whimpering and I feel that policemen are going to ask me for my hawker's license. The world and I seem to be at cross purposes.

When I see anyone I know coming on the same side of the street I start giggling nervously, and as they come into the picture beat them to it with some such remark as:

"It's white!"

"What's white?" they say, not being in on the secret.

"My suit," I say. "I thought I'd put on a white suit."

"So I see," they say, and into that remark I read anything from mild amusement to downright contempt. Incidentally, on those days when I choose to wear my white suit every other man in the county is dressed in blue serge. This I jot down as a fashion note.

I suppose that such self-consciousness is a form of egotism—that I should think that anyone knows at all what I have on or cares. But that rig is too white; I know that. I have an old brown thing which suits my mood better.