CLOTHING. 
27 
man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, 
my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will 
do; will they not ? Who ever saw his old clothes, —- 
his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primi¬ 
tive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to be¬ 
stow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be be¬ 
stowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who 
could do with less ? I say, beware of' all enterprises that 
require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of 
clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new 
clothes be made to fit ? If you have any enterprise be¬ 
fore you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not 
something to do with , but something to do, or rather 
something to he. Perhaps we should never procure a 
new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have 
so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that 
we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it 
would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our 
moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in 
our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend 
it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the cater¬ 
pillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and ex¬ 
pansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and 
mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under 
false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our 
own opinion, as well as that of mankind. 
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like 
exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and 
often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis or false 
skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped 
off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker gar¬ 
ments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or 
cortex; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, which 
