With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual
knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was
amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows: Before wearing out
an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury
of a new pair. But as there was still considerable service to be got out
of the old pair, he, like a prudent man, laid aside the new ones for
future use. His wife, however, who managed all this part of the domestic
business, determined, without consulting him, the morning when the new
trousers should be donned. She made the necessary changes when her lord
was in bed, putting the new in the place of the old. Garrison wore for
several days the new trousers, thinking all the time that they were his
old ones until his illusions in this regard were dispelled by an
incident which cost him the former. Some poor wretch of a tramp,
knocking in an evil hour at the pioneer's door and asking for clothes,
decided the magnificent possessor of two pairs of trousers, to don his
new ones and to pass the old ones on to the tramp. But when he
communicated the transaction to his wife, she hoped, with a good deal of
emphasis, that he had not given away the pair of breeches which he was
wearing, for if he had she would beg to inform him that he had given
away his best ones! But the pioneer's splendid indifference to _meum_
and _tuum_ where his own possessions were concerned was equal to the
occasion.
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