Casper Daily Tribune

Buying a Fur Coat.

According to a man who has been married long enough and often enough to have made some erudite notes on the subject, none of the ways that Solomon declared were too wonderful for him-the way of an eagle in the air, of a man with a maid, and the way of a woman with a winter coat to buy.

"My notes are at the service of any learned society that cares to go into this fascinating branch of research," he said with becoming modesty. "I feel that I have merely scratched the surface in the comparative psychology of the sexes. It is a field that is nearly virgin. As far as I have gone I have especially in regard to shopping habits made this important discovery that whereas a man, when he desires to buy a garment, accomplishes that act in one process, a woman in the same circumstances goes through five distinct processes.

"The man goes to his favorite clothing shop, selects the garment nearest to his needs in price and appearance, pays for it, and becomes its possessor. But the woman's approach to the object of her desire is much less direct and more subtle.

"It seems to me incumbent upon the psychologists and psychoanalysts, with their laboratories and their formulas, to find out whether the five stages of a woman's shopping correspond to any other series of five that appear in the mental operations of the female. Some of the shopping stages are well known in the retail trade and have their trade names.

"Deciding to treat herself to a fur coat, Mrs. Jones goes religiously through this program. She 'ad. shops,' she 'window shops,' she 'seek shops,' she 'shops,' and too often, alas! she 'sob shops.'

"In the course of her 'ad. shopping' she will read, an advertising manager has estimated, thirteen pages of advertisements before purchasing her fur coat. Some students of the subject say that she often decides in favor of a coat that is draped on the prettiest pictured model, but sounder observation points to the fact that it is men, not women, who are influenced by the faces of models -women have a science of their own about clothes, bless their hearts!

"When Mrs. Jones is next discovered she is stopping, if wealthy, before the windows of the more important stores. If she is not so wealthy, or even if she is poor, before the windows of the lesser stores.

"Mrs. Jones is now 'window shopping.' No window displayed fur coat escapes her super-eagle eye. One salesman swears that many women remain fifteen minutes gazing at one fur coat before they either leave the window or enter the store.

"And now, behold Mrs. Jones at length in the store. But what of it? She has very probably been in a dozen other stores the same day. She is now 'seek shopping.' She will fit on a half dozen coats. She will price them, She will demand the absolutely lowest price of each garment.

"And if Mrs. Jones is tired of wandering and if the price quoted here is the lowest and the coat the best, she will after trying on the garment another dozen times, buy it.

"But if she believes that in her 'seek shopping' she has come across a coat more in conformity with her general value idea she leaves the store and reverts to the place in mind. So she finally concludes the fourth process, Mrs. Jones 'shops.'

"And if that were the end of the story so much the better. But if Mrs. Jones resembles the majority of her sister women she will now commence her period of 'sob shopping.' For every time she passes a display of fur coats she will stop to bemoan her haste in buying something that does not measure up to the article she now beholds."