pparent than real. They are the wealthy
classes of countries with a lower industrial structure--nearer the
archaic, quasi-industrial type--together with the later accessions of
the wealthy classes in the more advanced industrial communities. The
latter have not yet had time to divest themselves of the plebeian canons
of taste and of reputability carried over from their former, lower
pecuniary grade. Such survival of the corset is not infrequent among the
higher social classes of those American cities, for instance, which
have recently and rapidly risen into opulence. If the word be used as a
technical term, without any odious implication, it may be said that the
corset persists in great measure through the period of snobbery--the
interval of uncertainty and of transition from a lower to the upper
levels of pecuniary culture. That is to say, in all countries which
have inherited the corset it continues in use wherever and so long as
it serves its purpose as an evidence of honorific leisure by arguing
physical disability in the wearer. The same rule of course applies to
other mutilations and contrivances for decreasing the visible efficiency
of the individual.

Something similar should hold true with respect to divers items of
conspicuous consumption, and indeed something of the kind does seem to
hold to a slight degree of sundry features of dress, especially if such
features involve a marked discomfort or appearance of discomfort to
the wearer. During the past one hundred years there is a tendency
perceptible, in the development of men's dress especially, to
discontinue methods of expenditure and the use of symbols of leisure
which must have been irksome, which may have served a good purpose in
their time, but the continuation of which among the upper classes today
would be a work of supererogation; as, for instance, the use of powdered
wigs and of gold lace, and the practice of constantly shaving the face.
There has of late years been some slight recrudescence of the shaven
face in polite society, but this is probably a transient and unadvised
mimicry of the fashion imposed upon body servants, and it may fairly be
expected to go the way of the powdered wig of our grandfathers.

These indices and others which resemble them in point of the boldness
with which they point out to all observers the habitual uselessness
of those persons who employ them, have been replaced by other, more
dedicate methods of expressing the same