Albuquerque morning journal., 1922-11-25

for a man to wear upon his head. But
direct from the shop window, nobody can
find companonship in its snobbish soul.
And to give up our present hat, an old
friend who has stuck faithfully to us
through thick and thin, who never scolds
us who never tries to borrow money from
u.s. who never hopes that something or
other will be a lesson to us, who never
remarks about the weather when there is
no weather to remark about, who never
talks to us when we don't want to be
talked to, who never asks us embarrassing
questions, who never insists on buying us
n drink when we don't want drink and
Stimulates sudden piety when we do who
is always waiting to go out with us and
always ready to come home with us-a
friend who has stood faithfully between
US and the burning sun, the beating rain
and the biting sleet, a friend who knows all
our little failings and loves us still-to
dismiss this old veteran for one Of these
callow shop window youngsters seems to
me to be one Of the basest acts of which
the human hand is capable.
I could not contemplate it, were there
not three rows of hooks on the wall of
my workroom provided for the accommo-
dation of hats which have done their work
and have won the right to a quiet and
secure old age. They have stuck faith
fully to me through thick and thin and l
shall stick to them with, hope, equal
fidelity. have them all there, seventeen
of them, all the hats l ever bought and
broke to wear and grew in time to love.
Velours, pseudo-velours, soft felts with
shorn brims and holes in them, battered
cloth hats with wide, floppy brims topees
and slickers-three rows Of them hung
above the homely clutter of pipes and to-
hacco Jars and ash Uttered papers on my
ansl,. I love to idle beneath them 1--WE
snend far too little time in iding) and to
live over again the old days which l lived
with each of them in turn, the old days
.,,ben 7 wore them by sunlight and pill
,ou,ed nv head in them by moonlight, the
.,,.door days whence ones richest mem
ories spring. Whether one has been snow
r,nded in Alaska or sun blinded in Arizona,
,,hotber one has grazed the grave amid
+bo deem sea loneliness or met the daily
aorper amid the driven crowds of cities,
oro,s hats remain repositories of memories
,,hicb are the very, substance of life, re-
,n,rders of the rich and full incoherence
which is life itself
But Damarlla is only vexed by them.
Apparently she can never look upon them
without observing in an Icy tone that since
: soer, determined to keep the old junk
ftb,s Is the way she refers to them; "old
funk" indeed!) will have the goodness
TO permit her to take them down and dust
them off occasionally? ! confess l do not
understand women.
Take Damarilla, for instance. Excellent
soul that she is, there are times when she
saems to have but one aim in life, to burst
into ones workroom with passionate
determination to dust something just at
the moment when one is dallying with
particularly stubborn sentence and TO
send sentence and typewriter and papers
and all flying into pandemonium, all be-
cause of a trifle of supposed dust And
when I am again permitted to enter my
humble quarters she informs me loftily
that my sadly dlsordered workroom has at
last been reduced to order and l am COM
PEELED to spend the next two hours in re-
covering things which have been mislaio
in the newly restored order. AS for cigar
ette ash, a vertable reign of terror exists
in our humble flat. 1t has come to such
pass that one cannot accidentally drop
whiff of cigarette ash on ones own carpet.
1t has come to that. Thus far. however,
have succeeded in keeping her from my
hats What would happen to them if she
actually did succeed in laying hands on
them. l shrink from contemplating.
All morning my hat and 1.-THE hat
which was so soon to be graduated to the
well earned company of its seventeen
elders on my workroom wall-walked up
and down Broadway gazing into the win
dows of Broadways hat shops And the
sight depressed us both. We didn't have
the nerve to enter any of them. We fooled
around until luncheon time andthen turned
sadly homeward. We unlocked the door