.
Nobody was ever ordered out for execution for wearing black
gloves, although they are unusual, and now and then one sees a
woman, whose soul is set on novelty, gorgeous in yellow cavalry
gauntlets, or even with white dragoon gauntlets, making her look
like a badly focused photograph.

Lastly, as to the hat. What shall it be, Esmeralda?

No tuft of grass-green plumes for you, like Queen Guinevere's,
nor yet the free flowing feather to be seen in so many beautiful
old French pictures, nor the plumed hat which "my sweet Mistress
Ann Dacre" wore when Constance Sherwood's loving eyes first fell
upon her, but the simple jockey cap, exactly matching your habit,
and costing two dollars and a half or three dollars; the Derby
cap for the same price or a little more; or, best of all, the
English or the American silk hat, as universally suitable as a
black silk frock was in the good old times when Mrs. Rutherford
Birchard Hayes was in the White House. The English Henry Heath
hat at seven or eight dollars, with its velvet forehead piece and
its band of soft, rough silk, stays in place better than any
other, but it is too heavy for comfort. If you can have an
American hatter remodel it, making it weigh half a pound less, it
will be perfection, always provided that he does not, as he
assuredly will unless you forbid it, throw away the soft, rough
band, which keeps the hat in place, and substitute one of the
American smooth bands, designed to slip off without ruffling the
hair, and doing it instantly, the moment that a breeze touches
the brim of the hat. A hunting guard, fastened at the back of the
hat brim and between two habit buttons is better than an elastic
caught under the braids of your hair, for when an elastic does
not snap outright, it is always trying to do so, and in the
effort holds the hat so tightly on the head so as sometimes to
give actual pain. The hunting guard is no restraint at all unless
the hat flies off, in which case it keeps it from following the
example of John Gilpin's, but with the Henry Heath lining, your
hat is perfectly secure in anything from a Texas Norther to a New
England east wind. If you follow London example, and wear a straw
hat for morning rides, sew a piece of white velvet on the inner
side of the band, and your forehead will not be marked.

Arrayed after these suggestions, Esmeralda, you will be
inconspicuous, and that is the general aim of the true lady's
riding dress, with the except