now and then somebody turns up with the idea in his
head that he doesn't need a hat on it. There is a white garbed
gentleman of Grecian mould who parades Broadway every day without a hat.

It is indisputable that the hats women wear to-day are more beautiful
than they have been for generations, perhaps centuries. Yet this fact
has met with little expression of appreciation. This present
excellence is because women's hats now are the product of intellectual
design. In the '80's the idea was entertained that decoration of a
woman's hat was increased by attaching to it something in the way of
beads or feathers wherever there was a space free. A fashionable
woman's hat to-day may be as simple and, in its way, as effective as
art as a Whistler symphony; a single splotch of colour, it may be,
acting as a foil against a rich mass. Or the hat is a replica, as it
were, of the celebrated design of a period in history. But the erudite
subject of women's hats should not be touched upon without a salute to
that racy model which crowns the far-famed 'Arriet, whose Bank-holiday
attire was so delightedly caressed by the pencil of the late Phil May.
None could forget his tenderly human drawing of the lady with the
bedraggled feather over one eye who has just been ejected by the
bar-man, and who turns to him to say: "Well, the next time I goes into
a public house, I goes where I'm _respected_!"

A hat is distinguished from a cap or bonnet by the possession of a
brim. The modern hat can be traced back to the _petasus_ worn by the
ancient Romans when on a journey; and hats were also thus used by the
earlier Greeks. Not until after the Norman conquest did the use of
hats begin in England. A "hatte of biever" was worn by one of the
"nobels of the lande, mett at Clarendom" about the middle of the 12th
century; and Froissart describes hats that were worn at Edward's court
in 1340, when the Garter order was instituted. The use of the scarlet
hat which distinguishes cardinals was sanctioned in the 13th century by
Pope Innocent IV. The merchant in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales had

"On his head a Flaundrish bever hat";

and from this period onwards frequent mention is made of "felt hattes,"
"beever hattes," and other like names. Throughout mediaeval times the
wearing of a hat was regarded as a mark of rank and distinction.
During the reign of Elizabeth the caprices of fashion in hats were many
and various.

The Puritans affected