"Then why do you wear fashionable clothes?"

"I don't wear fashionable clothes--that is--I----"

"You have figured silk or cut velvet buttons, on your coat, I
believe. Let me see? Yes. Now, lasting buttons are more durable, and
I remember very well when you wore them. But they are out of
fashion! And here is your collar turned down over your black satin
stock, (where, by the by, have all the white cravats gone, that were
a few years ago so fashionable?) as smooth as a puritan's! Don't you
remember how much trouble you used to have, sometimes, to get your
collar to stand up just so? Ah, brother, you are an incorrigible
follower of the fashions!"

"But, Mary, it is a great deal less trouble to turn the collar over
the stock."

"I know it is, now that it is fashionable to do so."

"It is, though, in fact."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"But when it was fashionable to have the collar standing, you were
very willing to take the trouble."

"You would not have me affect singularity, sister?"

"Me? No, indeed! I would have you continue to follow the fashions as
you are now doing. I would have you dress like other people. And
there is one other thing that I would like to see in you."

"What is that."

"I would like to see you willing to allow me the same privilege."

"You have managed your case so ingeniously, Mary," her brother now
said, "as to have beaten me in argument, though I am very sure that
I am right, and you in error, in regard to the general principle. I
hold it to be morally wrong to follow the fashions. They are
unreasonable and arbitrary in their requirements, and it is a
species of miserable folly, to be led about by them. I have
conversed a good deal with old aunt Abigail on the subject, and she
perfectly agrees with me. Her opinions, you can not, of course,
treat with indifference?"

"No, not my aunt's. But for all that, I do not think that either she
or uncle Absalom is perfectly orthodox on all matters."

"I think that they can both prove to you beyond a doubt that it is a
most egregious folly to be ever changing with the fashions."

"And I think that I can prove to them that they are not at all
uninfluenced by the fickle goddess."

"Do so, and I will give up the point. Do so and I will avow myself
an advocate of fashion."

"As you are now in fact. But I accept your challenge, even though
the odds of age and numbers are against me. I am very much mistaken,
indeed, if I cannot maintain