he chaperon, the hood, and the
other ancestors and descendants of the roundlet.

A fashion is born, not made. Necessity is the mother of Art, and Art
is the father of Invention. A man must cover his head, and if he has a
cloak, it is an easy thing in rain or sunshine to pull the folds of
the cloak over his head. An ingenious fellow in the East has an idea:
he takes his 8 feet--or more--of material; he folds it in half, and
at about a foot and a half, or some such convenient length, he puts
several neat and strong stitches joining one point of the folded
material. When he wraps this garment about him, leaving the sewn point
in the centre of his neck at the back, he finds that he has directed
the folds of his coat in such a manner as to form a hood, which he may
place on or off his head more conveniently than the plain unsewn
length of stuff. The morning sun rises on the sands of Sahara and
lights upon the first burnoose. By a simple process in tailoring, some
man, who did not care that the peak of his hood should be attached to
his cloak, cut his cloth so that the cloak had a hood, the peak of
which was separate and so looser, and yet more easy to pull on or off.
Now comes a man who was taken by the shape of the hood, but did not
require to wear a cloak, so he cut his cloth in such a way that he had
a hood and shoulder-cape only. From this to the man who closed the
front of the hood from the neck to the edge of the cape is but a quick
and quiet step. By now necessity was satisfied and had given birth to
art. Man, having admired his face in the still waters of a pool,
seeing how the oval framed in the hood vastly became him, sought
to tickle his vanity and win the approbation of the other sex, so,
taking some shears, cut the edge of his cape in scallops and leaves. A
more dandified fellow, distressed at the success of his brother's
plumage, caused the peak of his hood to be made long.

[Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VI. (1422-1461)

His hair is cropped over his ears and has a thick fringe on his
forehead. Upon the ground is his roundlet, a hat derived from the
twisted chaperon of Richard II.'s day. This hat is worn to-day, in
miniature, on the shoulder of the Garter robes.]

Need one say more? The long peak grew and grew into the preposterous
liripipe which hung down the back from the head to the feet. The dandy
spirit of another age, seeing that the liripipe can grow no more, and
that the shape o