assume masculine
'habits,' it is unreasonable to continue the stigma. In like manner,
when the cloth belonged to the customer, it was allowable enough to
suspect him of a little amiable weakness for cabbage; but now that he
is himself the clothier, the joke is pointless and absurd. Tailors,
however, can afford to laugh, as well as other people, at their
conventional double--or rather _ninth_, for at least in our own day
they have wrought very hard to elevate their calling into a science.
The period of lace and frippery of all kinds has passed away, and this
is the era of simple form, in which sartorial genius has only cloth to
work upon as severely plain as the statuary's marble. It is true, we
ourselves do not understand the 'anatomical principles' on which the
more philosophical of the craft proceed, nor does our scholarship
carry us quite the length of their Greek (?) terminology; but we
acknowledge the result in their workmanship, although we cannot trace
the steps by which it is brought about.

Very different is the plan now from what it was in the days of Shemus
nan Snachad, James of the Needle, hereditary tailor to Vich Ian Vohr,
when men were measured as classes rather than as individuals, and when
a cutter had only to glance at the customer to ascertain to which
category he belonged.

'You know the measure of a well-made man? Two double nails to the
small of the leg'----

'Eleven from haunch to heel, seven round the waist. I give your honour
leave to hang Shemus, if there's a pair of shears in the Highlands
that has a baulder sneck than her ain at the _camadh an truais_ (shape
of the trews).' And so the thing was done, without tape or figures,
without a word of Greek or anatomy! However, the anatomical tailors we
shall not meddle with for the present, because we do not understand
their science; nor with the Greek tailors, because we fear to take
the liberty; nor with the Hebrew tailors, because we are only a
Gentile ourselves. Our object is to draw attention to the doings of an
individual who interferes with no science but his own, and who
patronises exclusively his mother-tongue, which is not Hebrew, but
broad Scotch.

This individual is Mr Macdonald, a near neighbour of ours, who, about
eighteen years ago, listened with curiosity, but not with dread, to
the clamorous pretensions of the craft to which he belonged. At that
time, every man had a 'new principle' of his own for the sneck of the
shears, some