eral. When General Grant visited foreign courts, he went
handsomely and properly ablaze in the uniform of a full general, and
was introduced by diplomatic survivals of his own Presidential
Administration. The latter, by official necessity, went in the meek
and lowly swallow-tail--a deliciously sarcastic contrast: the one dress
representing the honest and honourable dignity of the nation; the other,
the cheap hypocrisy of the Republican Simplicity tradition. In Paris
our present representative can perform his official functions reputably
clothed; for he was an officer in the Civil War. In London our late
ambassador was similarly situated; for he, also, was an officer in the
Civil War. But Mr. Choate must represent the Great Republic--even at
official breakfasts at seven in the morning--in that same old funny
swallow-tail.

Our Government's notions about proprieties of costume are indeed very,
very odd--as suggested by that last fact. The swallow-tail is recognised
the world over as not wearable in the daytime; it is a night-dress,
and a night-dress only--a night-shirt is not more so. Yet, when our
representative makes an official visit in the morning, he is obliged by
his Government to go in that night-dress. It makes the very cab-horses
laugh.

The truth is, that for awhile during the present century, and up to
something short of forty years ago, we had a lucid interval, and dropped
the Republican Simplicity sham, and dressed our foreign representatives
in a handsome and becoming official costume. This was discarded
by-and-by, and the swallow-tail substituted. I believe it is not now
known which statesman brought about this change; but we all know that,
stupid as he was as to diplomatic proprieties in dress, he would not
have sent his daughter to a state ball in a corn-shucking costume, nor
to a corn-shucking in a state-ball costume, to be harshly criticised
as an ill-mannered offender against the proprieties of custom in both
places. And we know another thing, viz. that he himself would not have
wounded the tastes and feelings of a family of mourners by attending
a funeral in their house in a costume which was an offence against the
dignities and decorum prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom.
Yet that man was so heedless as not to reflect that all the social
customs of civilised peoples are entitled to respectful observance,
and that no man with a right spirit of courtesy in him ever has any
disposition to