dful railway facilities for the Eastern Shore, and
that two railways there would never pay.

Finally, Judge Custis wrote to his son-in-law to come to Annapolis and
meet these misstatements in person.

Milburn came, and his pride being irritated by the nature of the
opposition, he wore to the scene of the combat his ancestral hat.

He became at once the most marked figure in Maryland.

In one end of the state he was caricatured in drawings and verses as the
generic Eastern-Shore man, wearing such a hat because he had not heard
of any later styles.

The connection of a man of last century's hat with such a progressive
thing as a railroad, seemed to excite everybody's risibilities. His
railroad was called the Hat Line, even in the debates, and coarse people
and negroes were hired by wits in the lobby to attend the Legislature
with petitions for the Eastern Shore railroad, the whole delegation
wearing antique and preposterous hats, gathered up from all the old
counties and from the slop-shops of Baltimore; and in that day queer
hats were very common, as animal skins of great endurance were still
used to manufacture them.[17]

From Somerset word was sent that Milburn retained his hat from no
amiable weakness or eccentricity, but because he had entered a vow never
to abandon it till he had put every superior he had under his feet; and
that he was a victim of gross forest superstition, and had made a
bargain with the devil, who allowed him to prosper as long as he braved
society with this tile.

The hotel servants chuckled as he went in and out; the oystermen and
wood-cutters called jocosely to each other as he passed by; respectable
people said he could have no consideration for his wife to degrade her
by raising the derision of the town. Judge Custis finally remarked:

"Milburn, I resolved, many years ago, never to address you again on the
subject of your dress. My duty makes me break the resolve: your hat is
the worst enemy of your railroad."

Vesta, however, was the Entailed Hat's greatest victim. It lay upon her
spirits like a shroud. Nervous and apprehensive as she had become, the
perpetual admonition and friction of this article drove her into silence
and gloom, poisoned the air and blocked up the sunlight, made going
forth a constant running of the gantlet, and hospitality a comedy, and
human observation a wondering stare.

The hat was the silent, unindicated thing that stood between her and her
husband and