able and rushing out into the night. Nevertheless, they must
have been shocked.

The French Revolution, judged according to the hope it was made in,
must be pronounced a failure: it effected no fundamental change in human
nature. But it was by no means wholly ineffectual. For example, ladies
and gentlemen ceased to powder their hair, because of it; and gentlemen
adopted simpler costumes. This was so in England as well as in France.
But in England ladies and gentlemen were not so nimble-witted as to be
able to conceive the possibility of a world without powder. Powder had
been sent down from heaven, and must not vanish from the face of the
earth. Said Sir John to his Lady, ''Tis a matter easy to settle.
Your maid Deborah and the rest of the wenches shall powder their hair
henceforth.' Whereat his Lady exclaimed in wrath, 'Lud, Sir John! Have
you taken leave of your senses? A parcel of Abigails flaunting about the
house in powder--oh, preposterous!' Whereat Sir John exclaimed 'Zounds!'
and hotly demonstrated that since his wife had given up powder there
could be no harm in its assumption by her maids. Whereat his Lady
screamed and had the vapours and asked how he would like to see his
own footmen flaunting about the house in powder. Whereat he (always a
reasonable man, despite his hasty temper) went out and told his footmen
to wear powder henceforth. And in this they obeyed him. And there arose
a Lord of the Treasury, saying, 'Let powder be taxed.' And it was so,
and the tax was paid, and powder was still worn. And there came the
great Reform Bill, and the Steam Engine, and all manner of queer things,
but powder did not end, for custom hath many lives. Nor was there an end
of those things which the Nobility and Gentry had long since shed from
their own persons--as, laced coats and velvet breeches and silk hose;
forasmuch as without these powder could not aptly be. And it came
to pass that there was a great War. And there was also a Russian
Revolution, greater than the French one. And it may be that everything
will be changed, fundamentally and soon. Or it may be merely that Sir
John will say to his Lady, 'My dear, I have decided that the footmen
shall not wear powder, and not wear livery, any more,' and that his Lady
will say 'Oh, all right.' Then at length will the Eighteenth Century
vanish altogether from the face of the earth.

Some of the shallower historians would have us believe that powder
is deleterious to the ra