ng of the kind. And what is
more, they were convinced that the real secret of beauty in dress had
been discovered by them; that past fashions were absurd, and that the
future could not improve on their creations. The sculptors and painters
of that day (men of as great talent as any now living), were enthusiastic
in reproducing those monstrosities in marble or on canvas, and authors
raved about the ideal grace with which a certain beauty draped her shawl.

Another marked manner in which we are influenced by circumambient
suggestion, is in the transient furore certain games and pastimes create.
We see intelligent people so given over to this influence as barely to
allow themselves time to eat and sleep, begrudging the hours thus stolen
from their favorite amusement.

Ten years ago, tennis occupied every moment of our young people's time;
now golf has transplanted tennis in public favor, which does not prove,
however, that the latter is the better game, but simply that compelled by
the accumulated force of other people's opinions, youths and maidens, old
duffers and mature spinsters are willing to pass many hours daily in all
kinds of weather, solemnly following an indian-rubber ball across ten-
acre lots.

If you suggest to people who are laboring under the illusion they are
amusing themselves that the game, absorbing so much of their attention,
is not as exciting as tennis nor as clever in combinations as croquet,
that in fact it would be quite as amusing to roll an empty barrel several
times around a plowed field, they laugh at you in derision and instantly
put you down in their profound minds as a man who does not understand
"sport."

Yet these very people were tennis-mad twenty years ago and had night come
to interrupt a game of croquet would have ordered lanterns lighted in
order to finish the match so enthralling were its intricacies.

Everybody has known how to play _Bezique_ in this country for years, yet
within the last eighteen months, whole circles of our friends have been
seized with a midsummer madness and willingly sat glued to a card-table
through long hot afternoons and again after dinner until day dawned on
their folly.

Certain _Memoires_ of Louis Fifteenth's reign tell of an "unravelling"
mania that developed at his court. It began by some people fraying out
old silks to obtain the gold and silver threads from worn-out stuffs;
this occupation soon became the rage, nothing could restrain the del