of me if she does not measure my character, but only the
breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We
worship not the Graces, nor the Parcæ, but Fashion. She spins and
weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a
traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I
sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in
this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a
powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that
they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be
some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg
deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these
things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not
forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.
On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in
this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make
shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on
what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of
space or time, laugh at each other’s masquerade. Every generation
laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are
amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as
much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands.
All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious
eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain
laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be
taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that
mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannon ball rags are as becoming
as purple.
The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps
how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may
discover the particular figure which this generation requires today.
The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of
two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a
particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the
shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season
the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is
not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely
because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men
may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day
more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as
far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that
mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that
corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they
aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better
aim at something high.
As for a Shelter
, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life,
though there are instances of men having done without it for long
periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that “the
Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his
head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow—in a
degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in
any woollen clothing.” He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, “They
are not hardier than other people.” But, probably, man did not live
long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in
a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally
signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family;
though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates
where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy
season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is
unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost
solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the
symbol of a day’s march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark
of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not
made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his
world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and
out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm
weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing
of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he
had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam
and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes.
Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical
warmth,
