Ellis Parker Butler

“ To be able to buy of a manufacturer a hat that will make the pug nose and big ears of a man I have never seen seem normal and beautiful when that man enters my store and buys a hat, requires calm. And no hatter can have calm in his soul while his daughter is love sick and unhappy. I demand happiness about and around me, and I must have it. So I told my wife, and I told her so most emphatically, and I informed her that Anne must become happy at once. ”

“ When a shoe is on, it is full of foot, and when a glove is on, it is full of hand; but a top hat is not, and never can be, full of head, until such a day as heads assume a cylindrical shape, perfectly flat on top. And no sensible man ever expects that day to come. ”

“ The gyroscope is, as everyone knows, a top, and I might have called the hat I invented a top hat, except that any tall cylindrical silk or beaver hat is called a top hat, so I was forced to adopt the name of gyro-hat.
A gyroscope is not an ordinary top. It is like a heavy fly wheel, revolving on an axis; and if it is spun, the speed of the revolutions maintains the axis in the perpendicular. A huge gyroscope is used to steady the channel steamers, which would otherwise stagger and reel. ”

“ As a practical hat dealer my time has been almost exclusively devoted to hats and, as a good wife, my companion’s attention has been almost exclusively devoted to her husband, while Anne was usually so calm and self-contained that she did not take my attention from my hat business at all. But when such a daughter suddenly develops signs of weeping and sighs and general nervousness, any father, no matter how devoted to the hat trade, must pay attention.
One of the primary necessities of a dealer in good hats is calm. An ordinary hat dealer may not need calm. ”

“ Further investigation only made the matter seem worse, for quiet inquiries brought out the information that Walsingham Gribbs had been staggering since the year his father died. He had been constantly in a reeling, staggering state since his twentieth birthday. For such a man reform is, indeed, impossible. And what made the case more sad was that all proof seemed to point to the fact that Walsingham Gribbs was not a “bounder” nor a “rounder,” two classes of men who occasionally acquire a stagger and a reel in company with hearty boon companions. ”

“ My wife said she feared it would require some time to persuade the public to take to silk hats with ear tabs, and that the sight of a man in a silk hat with ear tabs would be a sign that he was a staggerer. She wanted another method of holding the hat on the head.
“Vacuum suction,” I said, for I am quick to catch an idea. A man has to be, in the hat business. “But,” I added, “where would you get the vacuum? A man cannot be expected to carry a can of vacuum, or whatever he would need to carry vacuum in, around with him; especially the kind of man that would need the gyro-hat.” ”

“ I said.
“Then, sir,” said the waiter apologetically, “unless you are a very heavy drinker I would not advise a quart of that brandy. A quart of that brandy, sir, would, if I may so speak, lay you out flat. You would not reel and stagger, sir. You would be paralyzed stiff, sir, dead to the world.” ”

“ He may buy his hats as another dealer buys flour, in the bulk, and then trust to advertisements to sell them; but I am not that kind of hat dealer. Hat dealing is an art with me, and great art requires calm and peace in order that it may reach its highest development.5 When I buy hats I do not think of dozens and dollars. ”

“ That is how I acquired my unfortunate stagger and unpleasant reel, and I have only told you this that you may have no unjust suspicions.”
“But why,” asked my wife, who had been greatly interested by Walsingham’s story, “do you not revolve in the opposite direction, and ‘unwind’ yourself, as we used to say?”
“Madame,” said Walsingham, “I have. Every night, for one hour before I go to bed I revolve, but it requires an immense number of revolutions to overcome such a spin as I had in my youth.” He waited a moment and then said: “But I am now ready to try the gyro-hat.” ”

“ A gyroscope has just been adopted to the monorail cars, and so long as the gyroscope gyrates the monorail car cannot stagger or reel. If a proper gyroscope was placed on the end of a knitting needle and gyrated at full speed, that knitting needle could be stood on end and it would not fall over.
Therefore, if a gyroscope was placed in the top of a top hat, and the top hat firmly fastened to the head of a man, and the gyroscope set going, that man would9 remain perpendicular in spite of anything. ”

“ I and the lads of the neighborhood found this a good place to play, and one day I was standing exactly in the center of the platform when one of the boys happened to start the motor. I had sense enough to remain exactly in the center of the platform, or I would have been thrown off, and possibly killed, for the platform was revolving at the rate of eight thousand revolutions a minute. The motor had power to revolve the platform slowly when loaded with a mule and loaded wagon, so it was capable of immense speed with only a small boy on it. ”

“ If it is in the same direction it is no use to stop him now, for by this time he will be in such a condition of reeling and staggering that we would not have him as a son-in-law on any terms. I propose, therefore, to let him spin here for a few hours, when he will have had a full recovery or be permanently too dizzy for any use. ”

“ But while I was standing in dismay love found a way, as love always will, and Anne rushed to the cellar and brought out the stepladder and the ice pick. Placing the stepladder close to Walsingham she climbed it, and holding the point of the ice pick at the exact center of the top of the hat she pushed down. In a moment a sizzing noise told us that she had bored a hole in the31 hat, letting the vacuum escape, and the hat flew from Walsingham’s head. ”