Taking Off One's Hat

IN parodying the ballad form, Dr. Johnson made that memorable couplet,

Nor did he see, as Stevenson would say, how highly he was praising the art of hat-lifting.

Taking off the hat, —its manner, method, gesture and generosity, style, swing, and symbol, truly show the man. (For Providence forbid that I should venture to speak here of the feminine process!)

As a man progresseth in removing his hat, so is he in his heart. First it is, ’Take off your hat to the lady, my son.' And then by leaps and bounds it becomes the low bow of fashion, the eager but bashful sign of love, the cold convention of civilization, or the patient attitude of reverence.

There be seven stages of removing the hat, and they are the seven ages of man.

First, he pulls at his st rings and yells lustily while Mother looks up and down the st reet, wondering if the whole neighborhood sees and hears. ‘Oh, dear; why won’t he leave his bonnet alone; was ever such a child born?’ Yes, madam, every mother’s son of them, save in Africa, where lace-frilled babycaps trouble not the sensitive gifts of heaven.

Secondly, he flings his hat across the dining-room when he comes in from school, or leaves it in all manner of places in the house: in the coal-bin, or on sister’s bureau. He loses it just at church time, and spoils the spirit of family reverence and piety. As the family enters the church the anthem is being sung, and the disgrace of being late again is laid on the innocent headpiece clutched in the hand of the small boy who has already forgotten the confusion of which he was the cause twenty minutes ago. In this stage also one’s hat is removed on the way to school by the hand of one’s bosom friend, passed down the line of surrounding boon companions, stuffed into others’ pockets, while dire thoughts of ultimate loss hold one in t heir grip, and the reckoning to be paid at home wraps the world in tragedy.

In the third stage, reached at about the age of fifteen, the burning problem is how to get one’s hat off gracefully. The whole world that one passes on the street is but a huge moving audience come out to see if I, the growing masculine, the unsophisticated amateur, t he germ of a man that is to be, have yet learned the art of greeting — especially the art of greeting that feminine half of the world which never removes its hat in t he st reet. I see her coming! She approaches! She looks at me, already in expect ation! The one supreme gesture that shall declare me a man must be made! The inevitable does not turn down a side street, as I had hoped. It has come! I must salute; must someway, somehow, anyway, anyhow, get that hat off my head. I must make the great surrender even now, when still the superiority of the other sex is an unsolved question in my mind.

I make my preparation. I try to raise my hand; it sticks fast in my pocket, until, just as she passes me, I look helplessly across the street, cast down my eyes, sullenly drag my hand forth, and—She has gone by me! I come to my senses by feeling my numb fingers foolishly pulling at my hat as if it were fastened on with nails! The whole thing is an ignominious failure, shattering my self-respect for many days. Ah, well, I will do better next time; but who knows what destiny has been overturned, what life-plan thwarted, by this defeat? When will she pass me again? And will she give me another chance when she does so? Who knows? In a dim way it seems to me then that something, said to be made in heaven, has been forever spoiled by a failure to connect between my fingers and the rim of my hat.

But in the fourth stage I rise t riumphant over this. Supremely confident as Beau Brummel himself, I have now learned to execute one long swing with my right forearm. Looking dazzlingly in front of me, I utter a clear ‘Goodafternoon!’ I lift my hat from my head in a majestic sweep as the sound of a dress goes by me; and low, down to my very knees, in a beautiful circle, goes my hat; then back again to my unruffled hair, — by which time I have gained the next tree or lamp-post in the street, and pursue my even way. The smile fades from my lips, and satisfaction reigns in my being. There is also just a tinge of pride at mastering the great game of mutual deception with the one who disappears in the distance behind me.

In the fifth stage I do not: know how I took off my hat. Perhaps it came off of its own accord. At any rate there it is, lying on the grass under the trees. It is forgotten and out of mind, even as the woodland all about me is forgotten. The June sun is setting, but it is a long twilight and there is no need to hurry. The face beside me is content to be careless of time, too, for her hat is in her lap. The even-song of the birds matches our unspoken words, and our music is the harmony of the brook I here just below us. In the presence of the sacred choirs we had unconsciously taken off our hats; and, because of the due reverence we paid them, their tones were echoed in our spirits. As she and I at last rise to go homeward and out of the woods, I carry my hat in my hand, never again to remember how I took it off that day, never again to replace it over cold companionless thoughts, but over the spaces of a mind changed by the music of love. Strange, very strange, this utterly unconscious removal of a man’s hat after so many years of skillful practice! Neither she nor I can remember just how it occurred that day.

The sixth stage is when I remove my hat exactly as all other men do. There in my office is my peg, here at home is my hat-rack, and in between the two I find no difficulty in taking off my hat to those I chance to meet. Without emotion I lift it, seldom varying the manner of the doing. I lift it in tune with habit, citizenship, tradition, convention, too, if you please. Yet this is a noble thing in its way. Bare-headed nowand then I stand before the turning mysteries of routine even as one stands at Niagara’s roar. The waters do not change their sound, there is nothing new to come from the ageless stream. Yet still I lift my hat. I lift it to brotherhood, duty, friendship, success, failure, and hope; to all the worn-out platitudes that still have strength to hold mankind together. I lift it to the men who have gone down in the race as truly as to those who have moved in an ascending scale; to those who are dead, and ‘to the next man who dies.’ I lift it both to age and youth, and it is a cause of rejoicing in this stage that my world is a double world, having in it many who have come through changes and yet have remained unchanged, who have seen theories rise and fall, yet themselves remained original men and women. To the gray hairs I lift my hat as to a crested peak whose snow keeps pure in spite of the village improvements, factories, and social revolutions that go on at its base. I lift it to the changelessness of man’s heart and to the substantial things that abide, like sunshine and rain and bread-making and smiles and tears.

It is here, in the sixth stage, that I learn of renewal going on beneath routine, lasting values beneath changing forms, and the tireless spirit alive under the tiresome way. Before this I stand bare-headed, for it is one of the marvels of the world. If one day a gust of wind uses my hat as a plaything, and I must pursue it across the street, to the undignified delight of the onlookers, let me soothe myself with this thought: Had I been less absorbed in my air-castles and more intent on my routine, on the walk to my office, the air would not have dashed my castles in ruin. Forgetting to hold my head erect before the commonplace, the kindly wind stepped in and removed my hat for me. And thereby she simply meant to say, ‘Next time don’t forget.’

Seventh, last stage of all, — I seldom pul my hat on now. The thing which it has taken me all my life to learn is useless to me. I shall no more be criticized for the awkward lifting of my hat. I sit by my low-burning fire, and as a lingering sportive flame shoots up, I remind myself with a smile that my bill for hats has gradually decreased to the vanishing point. And was it really I who only yesterday ran over the house shouting in knickerbocker tones, ‘Where’s my hat? Who knows where my hat is, anyhow? Can’t a feller lay his hat down ’thout losin’ it?’ It must have been I, yet, if you will believe it, I have not even needed my hat for a week, although I am told that the weather is quite cold outside. And, if you will believe it, no one in the house is much troubled to know where my hat is, and those who once were troubled have left an easy duty to their heirs.

Yes, it must be I, for I do not myself know where my hat is at this minute. What further proof would you have of my identity? Did I not lose it then, and have I not lost it now? If I have changed every seven years, still some small particle of my being has gone on and on, refusing the slavery of the hat, entering a lasting protest against covering the glory of man that looks toward heaven. The loss of my hat at seven and at seventy is one and the same thing. One complete circle is marked out plainly, and I return to myself, through the labyrinth, by means of many hats, ranging from bonnetstrings to a dull soft black which lasts long because seldom worn. As I look at my low-burning fire I do not doubt my identity, for when one loses his hat he finds himself.

This is simpler, far simpler, than St. Paul’s theories about hats. For he wrote in the days of turbans and caftans. I cannot imagine him in anything else, scarcely even in a turban. And as for taking off one’s hat, I do not suppose he would care one mite for what I have said about it. It would be Greek to him!

As the fire goes out I see more than the seven stages. The little hillock of ashes there does make an eight h. Familiar words of an ancient litany come to my ears. The carriages make their way through crowded city streets to a hillside that I have often visited for a friend’s sake. Mourners crowd the green turf, and a bird sings in the fir tree near by. Human kindness and heaven’s sunshine meet here. No matter how keen the winter storm may blow on that day, no matter how bare and fruitless the life of this soul has been, all men lift their hats in gracious tribute. So happens it to every man once in his course to have all the world lift its hat to him. It is but fit return to a man, thus to receive a diploma from a world which took so long to instruct him in the noble art of uncovering before its joys and its habits and its love.