mphasizing to
myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I
may find out by what degree of consanguinity They are related to me, and
what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly;
and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and
without any more emphasis of the "they"--"It is true, they did not make
them so recently, but they do now." Of what use this measuring of me if
she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders,
as it were a peg to bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, nor the
Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority.
The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys
in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite
simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would
have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old
notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs
again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in
his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for
not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor.
Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed
down to us by a mummy.

On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in
this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make
shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on
what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of
space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade. Every generation laughs
at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at
beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if
it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume
off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering
from and the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and
consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit
of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When
the soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps
how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may
discover the particular figure which this generation requires today. The
manufacturers hav