He had not been ignorant that his
clothes were queer in cut and out of date, and during his stay at
Miss Vane's he had taken much council with himself as to whether he
ought not to get a new suit with his first money instead of sending
it home. Now he had solved the question, after sending the money
home, by the discovery of a place on a degenerate street, in a
neighbourhood of Chinese laundries, with the polite name of Misfit
Parlours, where they professed to sell the failures of the leading
tailors of Boston, New York, and Chicago. After long study of the
window of the Parlours, Lemuel ventured within one day, and was
told, when he said he could not afford the suit he fancied, that he
might pay for it on the instalment plan, which the proprietor
explained to him. In the mirror he was almost startled at the
stylishness of his own image. The proprietor of the Parlours
complimented him. "You see, you've got a good figure for a suit of
clothes--what I call a ready made figure. _You_ can go into a
clothing store anywheres and fit you."
He took the first instalment of the price, with Lemuel's name and
address, and said he would send the clothes round; but in the
evening he brought them himself, and no doubt verified Lemuel's
statement by this device. It was a Saturday night, and the next
morning Lemuel rose early to put them on.
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