The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-03-16
JuSt As Important to Men Are Their Spring Toes As
 The FQshiOnS Are to Women
Chancing Drop In At Haberdashers Imagined Man Was Buying His Trousseau- -Awfully "Fnicky" About His Shirts Thought He Must Be Quite Effeminate
 But Was Mistaken
ny DOLLY DALRYMPLE.

his opinion on the subject of mems clothes I discovered the aforesaid gentle man busily engaged in selling silk socks should never associate silk socks under any circumstance, if had not long ago learned that it was very wicked to judge of appearances. l happened to attend the wedding of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fishes daughter at St. Bartholomew's in New York and saw the old Irish nurse walk down the aisle and imagined it was Hetty Green, from her unpretentious costume. Since then I've learned.
 | After the customer had purchased q dozen pairs of silk socks he then bought each pair of socks.
 AS he left I said to the haberdasher:
 ''Is that person buying his trousseau?" l "Oh. dear me-no," replied the haber- dasher highly amused "rhat is not an unusual thing nowadays. I have several customers who spend as much on their silk hosiery as they do on their suits during a year.
 They must be terribly rich" said oonfounded.
 'No. they are rather we'll off, but not Rockefellers by any means" said the haberdasher "One of my customers who indulges fin this extravaganza buys often two dozen pairs of silk hose at a time. and he says he does not consider it an extravaganza because he neither smokes nor drinks and feels he can be sporty in this way if he chooses"
 | 'Is the quality of mems hose any bet ter than that of those women buy?' said interestedly, ''because if 1t isn't it must keep them busy alarming all the time."
 '"They are much better because they are much thicker and their wearing quail ities are far better. Men like the gay colors that silk hose come in. too, be- cause they are so much prettier than the lisle and cotton dyes that are made For instance, look at these, continued he, and drew from box pair of the love- Hest blue ones as indigo-ish as the Gulf of Mexico.
 And yet there was a time," I ejacu- lated. when real nice gentleman wouldn't wear anything so gaily colored in footwear as that! Dudes and Johnny boys at the stage doors only indulged in | such things, and were the only ones who turned up their trousers when 1t was raining in London, so that a pair of ankles was revealed clad in silk of ceru- lean hue. I always thought it frightfully | effeminate."
 "Gentlemen of the old school to be sure, used to wear nothing but Balbrig- ! gan hose" said the haberdasher, ''and I car remember when my mother first tried to induce my father to put on pair | of black hose, and he peremptorily re- | fused, saying that he would never give 1 up his cream colored socks. Then there are others who have become used to the black hose and taboo blue. brown or green. as they would a muir or parasol | or a reticule.'
 Il Do you men ever pay $500 apiece for l shirts?" I finally asked after these pre- | liminaries.
 II '.Oh mercy, yes,'' said the haberdasher l in the most nochalant manner-just like \ that, as though 1t was an everyday oc- N currence Most of the best dressed men Il in town have their shirts made to order, I and that of course, causes them to pay more for them than the rank and file l Take, for instance, man who has some | little hobby about his shirts like wanting l the bosom quite wide, or unusually long, some other little idiosyncracy, and he has to pay for all that. Not long ago we had a customer who insisted upon having an eyelet in the front of his shirt near the neck for his scarf pin to gc