he clothes they wear,
to the everlasting deception of society. By the use of a little expert
padding, building up here and there, a miserable little human shoat will
be able to appear in all the glory of a gladiator. A silk outer garment
will cover the shoddy inner nature of a bit of attleboro humanity so
effectively that you will hardly be able to tell the real thing from the
bogus, and many a man lured into matrimony by the charms of an outward
Venus, will find after marriage that he has tied himself up for life to
a human hat-rack, specially designed by a clever dressmaker, to yank him
from the joys of a contented celibacy into the thorny paths of hymeneal
chaos.

"Nor will it stop here," the old gentleman continued, warming to his
subject. "I prophesy that just as at the present time society looks
with disfavor on me for going around in the simple dress of my early
days, so the time will come when an even more advanced society will
demand the placing of more clothes on top of those that you all wear
now. The outer garments of to-day will become the under-clothes of
some destined to-morrow, and centuries hence a man found walking on
the public highways dressed as you are will be arrested by the police
for shocking the sense of propriety of the community, and so on. It
will go on and on until you will find human beings everywhere decked
out in layer after layer of clothes until he or she has lost all
semblance to that beautiful thing that an all-wise Providence has
designed us to be. Man will wear under-clothes and outer clothes. He
will devise an absurd bit of starch, button-holes and tails called a
shirt, in which doubtless he will screw diamond-studs, and over which
he will wear a resounding waistcoat embroidered with all sorts of
wild-flowers in bloom. Then will come a stiff uncomfortable yoke for
his neck, which he will call a collar, around which he will wind what
he will call a necktie, the only useful purpose of which will be its
value as a danger signal to the rest of mankind, for it will be
through the medium of this addition to the human dress that character
will manifest itself, man being prone unconsciously to show his
strength or weaknesses in the manner of his personal adornment. This
will lead to all sorts of vain exhibitions until it will be with
extreme difficulty that the public will be able to differentiate
between a genuine peacock and an upstart jack-daw, masquerading in a
merry widow hat. Then