WHAT WE LOSE AND WHAT WE GAIN. 21$ 



a powerful press first, to squeeze their old no- 

 tions 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 

 maintained 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 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 reli- 

 giously the new. We are amused at beholding 

 the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Eliza- 

 beth, 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 

 the 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 pat- 

 terns keeps how many shaking and squinting 



