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Why is it that the introduction of a really graceful fashion is generally met with ridicule and opposition, while ugly modes are adopted with grave acquiescence and reverent submission?
"Seest thou not what a deformed thief this Fashion is?" "I know that Deformed; he goes up and down like a gentleman." Yes, we all know Deformed. When any of his family come to us, from England or France or any foreign country, we recognize the hideous brotherhood, and extend our welcoming hands; but Graceful must stay with us a long time to be greeted kindly, and her sisters from foreign parts are coldly looked upon, or dismissed at once.
To begin at the top,–"the very head and front of the offending." A gentleman goes into a fashionable hatter's, and the shopman, holding up for admiration a hat with a crown a foot high, of the genuine stove-pipe form, and a brim an inch wide, says, "This is the newest style, Sir." The gentleman walks home with the ugly thing on his head, but no one stares or laughs. 'Tis a new fashion, but all "take it easy." A year later, perhaps, the hatter shows him a thing with a brim a half an inch wider, but rolled up at the sides, and a crown of a much greater diameter at the top than where it joins the brim,–a specimen of the bell-crown. This is solemnly donned, and the wearer has the pleasure of knowing that the head-gear of all his friends is as hideous as his own. The inverted cone is worn with a sweet, Malvolio smile. And so "Deformed" has ruled the head of man for as many years as any of us can number, only ringing the changes, from one year to another, upon the three degrees of comparison of the word ugly.
But a change takes place; a light, graceful, low-crowned hat, with a brim wide enough for shelter or for shade, begins to appear as a fashion;–and how is it received? The clergyman thinks it would be very unclerical for him to wear it, though it may be as black, and is as modest, as the rest of his apparel. The young doctor timidly tries it on, and in his first walk meets the wealthy hypochondriac, his favorite patient, and the one who is trying to introduce him to practice, who seriously advises him, as a friend, not to wear that new-fangled thing,–if the poor hat had only been ugly, there would have been nothing bad in its new-fangled quality,–as all his respectable patients will leave him if he dresses so like a fool. The young lawyer gets one, because he heard an old lady speak of "those impudent-looking hats," and he is in hopes that impudence, which he understands is all-important in his profession, and which he is conscious of not possessing, may come with the hat. A lady goes out with her son, who is just old enough to have gained a coat, and is looking for his first hat. The mother has taste and judgment, and the youth has yet some unperverted affinity with graceful forms left, and so they choose and buy one of these comfortable and elegant chapeaux. Just before they reach home, they meet one of their best friends, a person whom the lady regards most kindly, and the young man admires and respects, and he greets him with, "Why, Tom! have you got one of those rowdy hats?" And so the stiff, stove-pipe monstrosity keeps its place, and the only pleasant, sensible, graceful, becoming hat that the nineteenth century has known, is called all sorts of bad names, and quiet gentlemen are afraid to wear it.
Has it not been the fate of the shawl, too, the most simple and elegant wrapper, and comfortable withal, that a man can throw around him, to be scouted and flouted?
Yes, Deformed! Come on next winter with a white surtout in your hand that must fit so tightly that your victims can but just screw themselves into it, with a stiff, square collar touching the ears, and seven capes, one over the other, "small by degrees and beautifully less," and all respectable gentlemen will accept it, and virtuously frown down, as dandies or rowdies, those who will not sacrifice their shawls to the ugly idol.
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