and a brim an inch wide, says, "This is the newest
style, Sir." The gentleman walks home with the ugly thing on his head,
but no one stares or laughs. 'Tis a new fashion, but all "take it
easy." A year later, perhaps, the hatter shows him a thing with a brim
a half an inch wider, but rolled up at the sides, and a crown of a
much greater diameter at the top than where it joins the brim,--a
specimen of the bell-crown. This is solemnly donned, and the wearer
has the pleasure of knowing that the head-gear of all his friends is
as hideous as his own. The inverted cone is worn with a sweet,
Malvolio smile. And so "Deformed" has ruled the head of man for as
many years as any of us can number, only ringing the changes, from one
year to another, upon the three degrees of comparison of the word
_ugly_.

But a change takes place; a light, graceful, low-crowned hat, with a
brim wide enough for shelter or for shade, begins to appear as a
fashion;--and how is it received? The clergyman thinks it would be
very unclerical for him to wear it, though it may be as black, and is
as modest, as the rest of his apparel. The young doctor timidly tries
it on, and in his first walk meets the wealthy hypochondriac, his
favorite patient, and the one who is trying to introduce him to
practice, who seriously advises him, as a friend, not to wear that
new-fangled thing,--if the poor hat had only been ugly, there would
have been nothing bad in its _new-fangled_ quality,--as all his
respectable patients will leave him if he dresses so like a fool. The
young lawyer gets one, because he heard an old lady speak of "those
impudent-looking hats," and he is in hopes that impudence, which he
understands is all-important in his profession, and which he is
conscious of not possessing, may come with the hat. A lady goes out
with her son, who is just old enough to have gained a coat, and is
looking for his first hat. The mother has taste and judgment, and the
youth has yet some unperverted affinity with graceful forms left, and
so they choose and buy one of these comfortable and elegant
chapeaux. Just before they reach home, they meet one of their best
friends, a person whom the lady regards most kindly, and the young man
admires and respects, and _he_ greets him with, "Why, Tom! have _you_
got one of those rowdy hats?" And so the stiff, stove-pipe monstrosity
keeps its place, and the only pleasant, sensible, graceful, becoming
hat that the nineteenth century ha