book of fashions we smile at the
monstrous attire in which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to deck
themselves. Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us,
for in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors
in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and _chapeau de bras_. In fact we are
really more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch
a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four
or five generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being
something that had escaped from somewhere.

Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made
no advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo
themselves, and do go fully clad--I am speaking exclusively of my own
sex--is about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I
wish I had the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to
inveigh against the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular
swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look like a poor species of bird
and gets him mistaken for the waiter. "As long as a man wears the modern
coat," says Leigh Hunt, "he has no right to despise any dress. What
snips at the collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut
about the flaps! What buttons in front that are never meant to button,
and yet are no ornament! And what an exquisitely absurd pair of
buttons at the back! gravely regarded, nevertheless, and thought as
indispensably necessary to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits
of metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom we laugh at. There is
absolutely not one iota of sense, grace, or even economy in the modern
coat."

Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of the period. That a
Christian can go about unabashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head
shows what civilization has done for us in the way of taste in personal
decoration. The scalplock of an Apache brave has more style. When an
Indian squaw comes into a frontier settlement the first "marked-down"
article she purchases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct as to
the eternal fitness of things tells her that its proper place is on the
skull of a barbarian.

It was while revolving these pleasing reflections in my mind, that our
friend Delorme walked across the stage in the fourth act, and though
there was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to
warrant it, I broke into tremendous applause, from which I