ir bonnets--if it can be called wearing at all, when it is
falling, like a Capuchin's hood, right down their backs. It thus forms a
capital receptacle for collecting any refuse or rubbish that may be
dropt, or thrown, into it. We know one lady who found her bonnet, when
she got home, perfectly filled with dust. It was quite a dust-bin in a
small way--and the luncheon, which was on the table at the time, had to
be sent away, as everything was spoilt by the dusty shower that the lady
had unconsciously shaken down upon it.

There was another lady--whose husband is not so rich as he should be,
and who grumbles fearfully, poor fellow, at every new bonnet he has to
pay for--who discovered her _chapeau_ to be as full as it could hold of
orange-peel. Some malicious little boys must have amused themselves in
walking behind her and pitching into it every piece of orange-peel they
found lying about. It was an amusing game of pitch-in-the-hole to them.
The consequence has been that the lady, who is extremely particular,
especially when she takes a new fancy like a new bonnet into her head,
has been compelled to throw away her old bonnet, and to have a new one.
The poor husband, who is really to be pitied (husbands generally are),
has been obliged, in order to pay for the additional expense, to walk
instead of riding, to give up smoking, and to cut off his luncheons--all
of which expenses came out of his own pocket and not out of the
housekeeping. The last time he was seen he was so thin that it was
almost a microscopical effort to see him. But this absurd fashion,
coupled with the other absurdity of long dresses, has the one good
effect in keeping our streets clean, for the low bonnets carry off all
the superfluous dust, and the long dresses carry away all the
superfluous mud.

[Illustration]

It would be difficult to say which fashion, in point of cleanliness,
ranks the lowest. A classical friend of ours humorously declares that he
thinks the bonnets will soon be the lower of the two, and that the
ladies, for convenience' sake, will shortly be wearing them, tied on to
the end of their dresses. It will be relieving them, he funnily says, of
a great _draw-back_, and will have the further advantage of keeping
their dear heads cool. This classical friend also says that the ladies,
as viewed at present with their bonnets hanging behind them, look like
female anthropophagi, or "monsters whose heads do grow beneath their
shoulders." H