veried servants. In both there is a very
elaborate show of unnecessary expensiveness, and in both cases there is
also a notable disregard of the physical comfort of the wearer. But
the attire of the lady goes farther in its elaborate insistence on the
idleness, if not on the physical infirmity of the wearer, than does that
of the domestic. And this is as it should be; for in theory, according
to the ideal scheme of the pecuniary culture, the lady of the house is
the chief menial of the household.

Besides servants, currently recognized as such, there is at least one
other class of persons whose garb assimilates them to the class
of servants and shows many of the features that go to make up the
womanliness of woman's dress. This is the priestly class. Priestly
vestments show, in accentuated form, all the features that have been
shown to be evidence of a servile status and a vicarious life. Even
more strikingly than the everyday habit of the priest, the vestments,
properly so called, are ornate, grotesque, inconvenient, and, at least
ostensibly, comfortless to the point of distress. The priest is at the
same time expected to refrain from useful effort and, when before the
public eye, to present an impassively disconsolate countenance, very
much after the manner of a well-trained domestic servant. The
shaven face of the priest is a further item to the same effect. This
assimilation of the priestly class to the class of body servants, in
demeanor and apparel, is due to the similarity of the two classes as
regards economic function. In economic theory, the priest is a body
servant, constructively in attendance upon the person of the divinity
whose livery he wears. His livery is of a very expensive character, as
it should be in order to set forth in a beseeming manner the dignity of
his exalted master; but it is contrived to show that the wearing of it
contributes little or nothing to the physical comfort of the wearer,
for it is an item of vicarious consumption, and the repute which accrues
from its consumption is to be imputed to the absent master, not to the
servant.

The line of demarcation between the dress of women, priests, and
servants, on the one hand, and of men, on the other hand, is not always
consistently observed in practice, but it will scarcely be disputed
that it is always present in a more or less definite way in the popular
habits of thought. There are of course also free men, and not a few
of them, who,