A BARBERSHOP BRAINSTORM From the New York Evening Post Grover Hickey, seventeen years old, of Coal Creek, Tenn., climbed out of a barber's chair In Knoxville the other day and asked for his check. Peter Mills, the barber, handed Grover a check for $4 for services rendered. Peter is now in jail, serving a year's sentence for robbery. Twelve months will swing around before the erring fellow of the chair and strap will again deftly dab his finger in the eye of his defenseless victims. Twelve months. There is another hand wielding the razor in the Mills' tonsorial emporium, another voice asks "bay rum*" gladfully, and saddens off when a grunt of negation comes from under the wet towel. But what about Peter Mills, what of his decline and fall? It was thus. When Grover Hickey came in from Coal Creek to the greater city on the Tennessee, Mills' barber shop attracted him. All he wanted was a hair cut, and he had the barber chief's word for it (he says) that the cost of the entire operation, hot or cold towel, would be 25 cents. And the head was shorn. Now young Hickey*s hair was a brilliant red In color. The boys in Coal Creek had long since tired of making believe warm hands at its ruddy glow; and the facetious injunction to look for a white horse when Grover came up the streets had lost Its tang. Nevertheless, when the amiable Peter Mills suggested that a singe would improve the looks, and a shampoo would raise the quality, and that tonic would heal up the ends where the cruel scissors had snipped, and that a certain dye, exclusive at the Mills emporium, would make that rufus shock a glossy sable— when these things were suggested to the boy in the chair, he assented, thinking (he says) that it was all included in the originally stipulated price of 25 cents. Before the Hickey youth escaped from the chair, he had been ministered to with everything In the place. He had even tasted the exotic allurement of a "facial massage." Two hours and a half had been whiled away in the barber shop. But when the check for $4 was forthcoming, and young Mr. Hickey was forcibly detained by the scruff of the neck until he handed over the amount, his indignation knew no limits. Putting away the temptation of throwing a brick through the window, which would occur to any virile, healthy boy of seventeen, Grover ran for a policeman. Mills was taken before a magistrate, the grand jury reported a true bill, and sentence was passed later. The best evidence, in the absence of witnesses, was Hickey's hair. The dye was coming off when the case came to trial, and all the colors of the solar spectrum were represented in that once caloric pelt The jury gave one look at the hair and voted "guilty," without leaving their seats. And that is why Peter Mills is lost to view. Was it a "brainstorm? Was Peter Mills perfectly sane before Hickey and his red hair entered the shop, and absolutely in possession of his senses after the $4 had gone into the till, and yet stark, staring mad from the moment the towel was fixed around the boys neck until the transformed hair had been slicked up according to the fashion of Knoxvllle. Omitting long hypothetical questions, it seems fair to assume that the jury was unduly influenced by the sorry figure cut by the boy when the dye began to fade. The psychology of barbering has heretofore pretty well escaped public attention. Why does the barber slam the steaming, dripping towel over your face, ram it down until you can't breathe, and then ask if you will have a massage. Why does he take that moment when a movement of the mouth would endanger the Jugular vein to inquire cheerily your wishes in regard to hair tonic? If (mark the hypothesis) a barber should ask a customer whether he would take witch hazel, and the customer should answer affirmatively, and the barber reaching out In good faith for the witch hazel, should pick up, by mistake, a bottle containing Billing's Beard Balm, and apply that to the face of the customer it being understood that one application of B. B. B is at 20 cents—and if the barber, under a delusion that the customer was answering *'yes" to every one of his questions, should proceed according to his delusion, what is the status of barber and barbered after the operation? Is the barber a robber, in the eyes of the law? According to the decision in Tennessee he is. Yet it wouldn't be surprising if those customers who found that there's many a hitch between the advertisement and the safety razor, and who pined for the sound of Peter Mills' subdued voice, should rake up that brainstorm idea and get a pardon later on. Washington Post, Washington, D.C., April 21, 1907