great will-power on the part of the owner and constant
watchfulness as well to keep a fat man's dress waistcoat from behaving
like a railroad folder. His dinner coat or his tail coat, if he wears a
tail coat, is invariably too tight in the sleeves; nine times out of ten
it binds across the back between the shoulders, and bulges out in a
pouch effect at the collar. His shirt front, if hard-boiled, is as cold
and clammy as a morgue slab when first he puts it on; but as hot and
sticky as a priming of fresh glue after he has worn it for half an hour
in an overheated room--and all public rooms in America are overheated.
Should it be of the pleated or medium well-done variety, no power on
earth can keep it from appearing rumply and untidy; that is, no power
can if the wearer be a normal man. I am not speaking of professional
he-beauties or models for the illustrations of haberdashers'
advertisements in the magazines. His collar, which is a torturer's
device of stiff linen and yielding starch, is not a comparatively modern
product as some have imagined. It really dates back to the Spanish
Inquisition where it enjoyed a great vogue. Faring abroad, he encloses
his head, let us say in a derby hat. Some people think the homeliest
thing ever devised by man is Grant's Tomb. Others favor the St. Louis
Union Depot. But I am pledged to the derby hat. And the high or
two-quart hat runs second.

This being the case for and against the parties concerned, I submit to
the reader's impartial judgment the following question for a decision:
Taking everything into consideration, which of these two really deserves
the booby prize for unbecoming apparel--the woman who plainly is dressed
in bad form or the man who is supposed to be dressed in good form? But
this I will say for him as being in his favor. He has sense enough to
wear plenty of pockets. And in his most infatuated moments he never
wears nether garments so tight that he can't step in 'em. Can I say as
much for woman? I cannot.

A few pages back I set up the claim that woman, considered as a sex and
not as an exceptional type, cannot divorce the social relation from the
economic. I think of an illustration to prove my point: In business two
men may be closely associated. They may be room-mates besides; chums,
perhaps, at the same club; may borrow money from each other and wear
each other's clothes; and yet, so far as any purely confidential
relation touching on the private sides of thei