careful never to be before or
behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man
of fashion sedulously escheweth--a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a
gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a
four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of
the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk
worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of
rain, has "taken the shine out of it."

In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher
Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are
never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think
their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of
the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see
him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days
proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling
along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to
the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been
attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and
he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for
stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want
that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well
tied _choker_. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the
pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical
investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment.
A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a
cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display
gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than
wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of
a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming _choker, fine_ if
you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour
harmonizing with his residual _toggery_: this he ties with an easy,
unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford
men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not
know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement
of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a
laxity in chokers, f