nder seven foot, whatever she wore. Empires came into fashion, and
the poor child looked like the giant's baby in a pantomime. We thought
the Greek might help her, but it only suggested a Crystal Palace statue
tied up in a sheet, and tied up badly; and when puff-sleeves and shoulder-
capes were in and Teddy stood up behind her at a water-party and sang
'Under the spreading chestnut-tree,' she took it as a personal insult and
boxed his ears. Few men liked to be seen with her, and I'm sure George
proposed to her partly with the idea of saving himself the expense of a
step-ladder, she reaches down his boots for him from the top shelf."

"I," said the Minor Poet, "take up the position of not wanting to waste
my brain upon the subject. Tell me what to wear, and I will wear it, and
there is an end of the matter. If Society says, 'Wear blue shirts and
white collars,' I wear blue shirts and white collars. If she says, 'The
time has now come when hats should be broad-brimmed,' I take unto myself
a broad-brimmed hat. The question does not interest me sufficiently for
me to argue it. It is your fop who refuses to follow fashion. He wishes
to attract attention to himself by being peculiar. A novelist whose
books pass unnoticed, gains distinction by designing his own necktie; and
many an artist, following the line of least resistance, learns to let his
hair grow instead of learning to paint."

"The fact is," remarked the Philosopher, "we are the mere creatures of
fashion. Fashion dictates to us our religion, our morality, our
affections, our thoughts. In one age successful cattle-lifting is a
virtue, a few hundred years later company-promoting takes its place as a
respectable and legitimate business. In England and America Christianity
is fashionable, in Turkey, Mohammedanism, and 'the crimes of Clapham are
chaste in Martaban.' In Japan a woman dresses down to the knees, but
would be considered immodest if she displayed bare arms. In Europe it is
legs that no pure-minded woman is supposed to possess. In China we
worship our mother-in-law and despise our wife; in England we treat our
wife with respect, and regard our mother-in-law as the bulwark of comic
journalism. The stone age, the iron age, the age of faith, the age of
infidelism, the philosophic age, what are they but the passing fashions
of the world? It is fashion, fashion, fashion wherever we turn. Fashion
waits beside our cradle to lead us by the hand throu