s, and, dear me, it
is such a very respectable gentleman--to think it could ever have gone
gadding about as a troubadour or a knight-errant, dressed in all those
fancy colors! Ah, well! we are more sensible in this age.

Or at least we think ourselves so. It is a general theory nowadays that
sense and dullness go together.

Goodness is another quality that always goes with blackness. Very good
people indeed, you will notice, dress altogether in black, even to
gloves and neckties, and they will probably take to black shirts before
long. Medium goods indulge in light trousers on week-days, and some
of them even go so far as to wear fancy waistcoats. On the other hand,
people who care nothing for a future state go about in light suits; and
there have been known wretches so abandoned as to wear a white hat. Such
people, however, are never spoken of in genteel society, and perhaps I
ought not to have referred to them here.

By the way, talking of light suits, have you ever noticed how people
stare at you the first time you go out in a new light suit They do
not notice it so much afterward. The population of London have got
accustomed to it by the third time you wear it. I say "you," because I
am not speaking from my own experience. I do not wear such things at all
myself. As I said, only sinful people do so.

I wish, though, it were not so, and that one could be good, and
respectable, and sensible without making one's self a guy. I look in
the glass sometimes at my two long, cylindrical bags (so picturesquely
rugged about the knees), my stand-up collar and billycock hat, and
wonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Then
wild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be good and
respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told; so that don't matter.)
I want to put on lavender-colored tights, with red velvet breeches and a
green doublet slashed with yellow; to have a light-blue silk cloak on my
shoulder, and a black eagle's plume waving from my hat, and a big sword,
and a falcon, and a lance, and a prancing horse, so that I might go
about and gladden the eyes of the people. Why should we all try to look
like ants crawling over a dust-heap? Why shouldn't we dress a little
gayly? I am sure if we did we should be happier. True, it is a little
thing, but we are a little race, and what is the use of our pretending
otherwise and spoiling fun? Let philosophers get themselves up like old
crows