A GENTLEMANLY PREJUDICE 77 



When I first came to England I soon discovered 

 that all scents on the male person, natural or arti- 

 ficial, were distasteful and even abhorrent to men. 

 I had been kindly taken in hand by new-found 

 friends who desired to make an Englishman of me 

 — a respectable person. They told me to wear a 

 silk hat and frock coat, tan gloves, and to carry a 

 neatly-folded umbrella in my hand. They also in- 

 structed me to take in The Times. One of my friends, 

 a nice old retired barrister, assured me that a man 

 who had not read his Times in the morning was unfit 

 to walk the streets of London. I obeyed them in 

 everything, but when they objected to a little Cologne 

 or lavender on my pocket-handkerchief I revolted. 

 They said I had come from a semi-barbarous country 

 and did not know all that this meant — that an 

 English gentleman with scent about him aroused a 

 strong feeling of hostility in others, and that it was 

 considered very low and indicated a person of an 

 effeminate and nasty mind. But as I had lived 

 among semi-barbarous people and hobnobbed with 

 savages and dangerous whites, I knew I was not 

 effeminate and that nastiness was not in my mind. 

 Their feeling about scents was an associate one. As 

 boys they all herded in great schools and universities, 

 and when the time came for the restraints to be 

 relaxed they went out to " see life," and seeing life 

 with them did not mean mounting a horse and riding 

 forth in quest of adventures; it simply meant going 

 up to London or any other big town in their neigh- 

 bourhood, where they placed themselves under the 



