nal effect of agreeable
association. But it is bad logic to derive a general conclusion
from a single fact: it did not follow that the dress would be
universally becoming because it was so on him. However, majorities
govern; the dress was voted. The tailors were glad to hear of it,
expecting a fine run of business.

"But when a tall son of Anak appeared in the little bodice of a
coat, stuck upon the hips; and still worse, when some very clumsy
forms assumed the dress, and one in particular, that I remember,
who was equally huge in person and coarse in manners, whose taste,
or economy, or both,--the one as probably as the other,--had led
him to the choice of an ugly pepper-and-salt, instead of the true
Oxford mix, or whatever the standard gray was called, and whose
tailor, or tailoress, probably a tailoress, had contrived to
aggravate his natural disproportions by the most awkward fit
imaginable,--then indeed you might have said that 'some of
nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they
imitated humanity so abominably.' They looked like David's
messengers, maltreated and sent back by Hanun.[23]

"The consequence was, the dress was unpopular; very few adopted
it; and the society itself went quietly into oblivion.
Nevertheless it had done some good; it had had a visible effect in
checking extravagance; and had accomplished all it would have
done, I imagine, had it continued longer.

"There was a time, some three or four years previous to this, when
a rakish fashion began to be introduced of wearing white-topped
boots. It was a mere conceit of the wearers, such a fashion not
existing beyond College,--except as it appeared in here and there
an antiquated gentleman, a venerable remnant of the olden time, in
whom the boots were matched with buckles at the knee, and a
powdered queue. A practical satire quickly put an end to it. Some
humorists proposed to the waiters about College to furnish them
with such boots on condition of their wearing them. The offer was
accepted; a lot of them was ordered at a boot-and-shoe shop, and,
all at once, sweepers, sawyers, and the rest, appeared in
white-topped boots. I will not repeat the profaneness of a
Southerner when he first observed a pair of them upon a tall and
gawky shoe-black striding across the yard. He cursed the 'negro,'
and the boots; and, pulling off his own, flung them from him.
After this the servants had the fashion to themselves, and could
buy the art