240 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



laid down as law. Once, when 1 spoke of the 

 comfort of old clothes, not a friend but frowned, 

 looking anxiously at his broadcloth, and daintily 

 tweaked the spear-points of his faultless collar. 



Old clothes, not out-worn or threadbare or 

 offensively soiled, but old in the sense of 

 adapted or ripened, so that your coat is con- 

 formable, an extra-cuticular garment that is twin 

 to your skin and not a veneer merely that is 

 cross-grained and rebellious, contesting every 

 extension and expansion of the wrinkles Nature 

 has given the only covering she allows you on 

 your entrance into this vale of sorrows. We 

 take time to do everything that we must do, to 

 live ; and why not allow time for your coat to 

 settle to a realization of what is expected of it ? 

 Occasionally a mania for that which is old takes 

 strong possession of a community, and many a 

 mortal wishes first and then swears that he does 

 belong to an old family; so why not extend 

 this merit of age to more of life's minor con- 

 siderations than we do. We prattle in a childish 

 way about old friends and old associations, as 

 if necessity was a common feature of mankind ; 

 so why not some other matters. Grandfather's 



