IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 179 



blue gray, and a Paris tailor displayed a tan- 

 colored habit made with a coat and a waistcoat 

 revealing a white shirt front. London women 

 are now wearing white waistcoats and white 

 ties in the Park, both tie and waistcoat as stiff 

 and masculine as possible. 



This affectation of adopting men's dress, when 

 riding, is comparatively modern. Sir Walter 

 gives the date in " Rob Roy," when Mr. Francis 

 Osbaldistone sees Diana for the first time and 

 notes that she wears a coat, vest and hat resem- 

 bling those of a man, "a mode introduced dur- 

 ing my absence in France," he says, "and 

 perfectly new to me." But this coat had the 

 collar and wide sharply pointed lapels and deep 

 cuffs now known as " directoire," and its skirts 

 were full, and so long that they touched the 

 right side of the saddle, and skirts, lapels, col- 

 lar and cuffs were trimmed with gold braid 

 almost an inch wide. The waistcoat, the vest, 

 as Sir Walter calls it, not knowing the risk that 

 he ran in this half century of being considered 

 as speaking American, had a smaller, but simi- 

 lar, collar and lapels, worn outside those of the 

 coat, and the "man's tie" was of soft white mus- 



