ved ever so little, or if the rain come down ever so
slantingly, the services of the hat are at an end: it is well enough
to intercept any thing coming down perpendicularly, but
"slantendicularly," as friend Slick says--no. Its present height is
just enough to prevent your wearing it in a carriage, and such, too,
as to give a moderate wind a good purchase upon it: the substance is
such that the least exposure to wet ruins it, whether of beaver or
silk; a moderate blow will crack or break its form; and for the first
week, if you have any thing like a sensitive head, or any bosses of
unknown qualities protruding from your cranium, you are doomed to
incessant headache from hat-pinchings. It has no properties of
usefulness to recommend it, and none of ornament, saving this--if it
can be called such--the being an invaluable appendage for a little man
to make himself appear tall. What a wide interval from the simplicity
of its Phrygian original!

Having, therefore, criticized our present head-gear, and condemned our
hats, without pulling them to pieces, let us enquire what a proper
covering for the head should be: first of all in point of usefulness,
and next in point of comely appearance. But let no man vainly imagine
that we expect to suit the fancies of all the creatures privileged to
wear hats, or even to cover their heads; we do not pretend to invent,
or decide upon, any one given type or form of head-dress. So many are
the wants of a man in covering his head, so widely differing from each
other are the exigencies of different people, that uniformity in hats
is to be given up as a bad job: to attempt it would foil the strength
of a Hercules: the utmost we can hope to effect is to lay down
certain limits for the variations of this apex of human pride.

For us, then, who live in a climate rainy, windy, hot, and cold, all
within any twenty-four hours of the year, just as the case may be, it
is plain that we want for general use something that will be proof
against the atmospherical accidents that may befall any man who goes
abroad to take the air. And here let it be observed, that in reasoning
about hats, all thoughts about that effeminate invention, the
umbrella, are to be laid aside. This utensil is truly a disgrace to
the manhood of the times; and its existence, by allowing people to
dispense with warm cloaks and other anti-rain appliances, has caused
more disease, in letting them catch cold, than any thing else we know