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Show i BUTTONS AND BADGES MY FRTEND Gordon was wearing a parti-colored button In his lapel the meaning of which was unintelligible unin-telligible to me. "Just joined the 'Boosters' club,'" he explained.' These badges of accomplishment are us numerous as (lies around a can of maple sirup ; they decorate all sorts and conditions of men ; th-jy reveal the most personal and intimate relations of life. We conceal nothing in these days of what we have done, of the organizations or-ganizations to which we belong, or of the activities In which we are engaged. The conductor who received my fare us I rode home on the electric cars was wearing on the lapel of his coat a huge gold-plated atrocity announcing that he had secured membership in some secret industrial or fraternal order with whose insig.iia I was unfamiliar. The professor who occupied the seat with me announced by the button but-ton on the lapel of his coat that he had been In the Civil war a.id by the keys dangling from his watch chain that he had accomplished no little in a scientific scien-tific way and that while In college he hud maintained a scholastic average of PO or above. The traveling man facing me told his business by the organization badge on his coat, and the number of degrees he had taken in Masonry hy his watch fob, his signet ring giving away another an-other series of facts concerning his fraternal affiliations. It was as easy to pick out the college boys and girls as to tell a policeman by the star that he wears. We take no stock these days in not letting our left hand know what our ri;Jit bund is up to. Instead, we shout It out until every Individual In the neighborhood knows tully our comings cod goings, what we have been doing i.nd where our money has gone. If we give a quarter to charity, we announce an-nounce the fact with a button; If we Join anything we publish our membership member-ship through the medium of a pin or n watch charm. 1 have wondered sometimes if the widow spoken of i.i sacred writ who dropped her farthing into the contribution contribu-tion box at the temple asked for a button but-ton when she was leaving the building, or if the Good Samaritan ultimately dangled a Carnegie medal on his shirt front or from his watch chain. It is quite possible If It was (lie style in those days. |