There is one point on which you are independent: you will not have the bay rum; you are a teetotaller. You say so in a weak voice which nevertheless has some adamantine quality that impresses him. He humors you; or perhaps your preference appeals to his sense of business economy.
From a row of chairs a man leaps to his feet, anxious to give _his_ head to the barber. A boy hastily sweeps up the hair that was yours--already as remote from you as if it had belonged to the man who is always waiting, and whose name is Next. Oh, it is horrible--horrible--horrible!
Indoors is going. We may just as well make up our minds on this revolutionary point, and accept it with such degree of hardy rejoicing or shivering regret as our natures prompt in us.
The movement has been long under way, gradually working the perfect ejection which seems now at hand. We might have recognized the dislodging process long ago, had we been far-sighted enough. It began--who shall say when it did begin? Surely not in the shaggy breasts of those rude ancestors of ours whom we hold in such veneration, and to whose ways we seem to ourselves to be so wisely returning. They dragged their venison into the depths of a cave darker and closer than any house, and devoured it in great seclusion. Perhaps it began in the San Marco Piazza at Venice, with the little open-air tables under the colonnades. "So delightful! So charming!" Thus the tourists, as they sipped their coffee and dallied with their ices. They were right; it was delightful and charming, and so it is to this day, but it was perhaps the thin edge of the wedge which is turning us all out now.
Supper was the first regular meal to follow the open-air suggestion, country supper on the piazza in the warm summer evening. That also was delightful, of course, and not at all alarming. All nations and ages have practiced the sport of occasional festive repasts out of doors when the weather has permitted. But breakfast was not long in following suit; and when dinner, that most conservative, conventional of meals, succumbed to the outward pressure and spread its congealing gravies in the chilly air, we were in for the thing in good earnest, the new custom was on. No longer a matter of times and seasons, the weather had nothing to do with it now; and in really zealous families the regular summer dining-room was out of doors. Summer dining-room--that sounds well; since summer and warmth go together traditionally. But not always actually in New England, where bleak rains overtake the world now and then, and clearing north-west winds come racing keenly. It was soon essential to introduce a new fashion in dinner garments: overcoats, sweaters, and heavy shawls, felt hats and mufflers.