It has been said by some critics that whiskers are a disguise. I should be unwilling to commit myself to this belief; nor can I accept the contrary conviction that whiskers are a gift of Almighty Providence in which the Giver is so sensitively interested that to shave them off is to invite eternal punishment of a kind--and this, I think, destroys the theory--that would singe them off in about two seconds. Whiskers are real, and sometimes uncomfortably earnest; the belief that they betoken an almost brutal masculine force is visible in this, that those whose whiskers are naturally thinnest take the greatest satisfaction in possessing them--seem, in fact, to say proudly, '_These_ are my whiskers!' But I cannot feel that a gentleman is any more disguised by his whiskers, real, ready-made, or made to order, than he would be if he appeared naked or in a ready-made or made-to-order suit. Whiskers, in fact, are a subtle revelation of real character, whether the kind that exist as a soft, mysterious haze about the lower features or such as inspired the immortal limerick,--I quote from memory,--
There was an old man with a beard Who said, 'I am greatly afeard Two larks and a hen, A jay and a wren, Have each made a nest in my beard.'
Yet I feel also, and strongly, that the man who shaves clean stands, as it were, on his own face.
We have, indeed, but to visualize clearly the spectacle of a gentleman shaving himself and put beside it the spectacle of a gentleman starching and curling his whiskers, to see the finer personal dignity that has come with the general adoption of the razor. I am not going to attempt to describe a gentleman starching and curling his whiskers,--it would be too horrible,--but I like to dwell on the shaver. He whistles or perhaps hums. He draws hot water from the faucet--Alas, poor Edward! He makes a rich, creamy lather either in a mug or (for the sake of literary directness) on his own with a shaving-stick. He strops his razor, or perhaps selects a blade already sharpened for his convenience. He rubs in the lather. He shaves, and, as Dr. Johnson so shrewdly pointed out that night at Dr. Taylor's, 'Sir, of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.' Perhaps he cuts himself, for a clever man at self-mutilation can do it, even with a safety; but who cares? Come, Little Alum, the shaver's friend, smartly to the rescue! And then, he exercises the shaver's prerogative and powders his face.