And What We Gain 223 



more emphasis on the " They." It is true they 

 did not make them so recently, but they do so now. 

 We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, 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. 



On the whole, I think that it cannot be main- 

 tained that dressing has in this or any other country 

 risen to the dignity of an art. At present men 

 make shift to wear what they can get. Like ship- 

 wrecked 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, 



