Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however
ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or
sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to
retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting
season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon
retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its
slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry
and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal
coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be
inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of
mankind.

We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by
addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are
our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be
stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments,
constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts
are our liber, or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling
and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear
something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad
so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he
live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy
take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate
empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most
purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained
at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for
five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two
dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for
a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents,
or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that,
clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be found wise
men to do him reverence?

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me
gravely, "They do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "They" at
all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I
find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot
believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this
oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, e