He never speaks an unpleasant word to any body; it is said he
spends half his salary for the poor, and visits them a great deal, and
spends much of his time in trying to reform the wicked and dissolute.
The common kind of people think he is a great man, and they flock to
hear him, and love him strangely. But fashionable people do not go there
much, and he gets a poor living. One may know that by his poor dress and
small house. So it is; religion must be done up in fashionable order, or
it is soon out of date in the market. The minister must be a ladies'
man, or the saloon will be more thronged than the church. And to be a
ladies' man it is understood that he must be a fashionable man, a
conformist, a pliant, time-serving, honey-mouthed, smile-faced,
glove-handed, eel-natured kind of a creature, as ready to smile on a sin
as a virtue; whose rebukes are so sugared that they are as agreeable to
take as homeopathic pills. There are multitudes of churches that have
more fashion in them than religion, and enough of worshipers and
ministers who think more of the mode than the matter of worship.

Literature must have on it the brand of Fashion, and even education must
receive the crown stamp of this graceless monarch, or be rejected by the
world and receive no diploma at its hands. It is true that the rule of
Fashion is almost omnific. To be out of Fashion is to be a mark for the
cold finger of scorn from its votaries, and set up as a target for the
shafts of their ridicule. So true is this, that it has become a common
saying, that "one may as well be out of the world as out of the
Fashion!" Yet what is Fashion, what does it amount to? Is one really
more respected, more beloved, more received into the arms of the good,
more caressed by the worthy, for being fashionable? We think not. The
best and most beloved men and women that have ever lived have been far
from the votaries of Fashion. They have lived with little thought and
little conformity to the demands of this prince of weak minds. They have
rather asked what was right, what was best, than what was fashionable.
Conformity to Fashion tends rather to disgust than respect. Deep down in
the hearts of all people there is a sense of the hollowness of Fashion,
and a just loathing of its pretension and show. Even its votaries
secretly despise it, and obey its dictates only because they think they
must. They know its baseness better than we can tell them. True, they do
not fully re