divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of
any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected
class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the
world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia,
she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a
travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she
"was now in a civilized country, where... people are judged of by
their clothes." Even in our democratic New England towns the
accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and
equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But
they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and
need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced
sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman's dress, at
least, is never done.

  A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a
new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty
in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero
longer than they have served his valet- if a hero ever has a valet-
bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who
go to soirees and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to
change as often as the 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 primitive elements, so that it was not a
deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to
be bestowed 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 before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not
something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to
be. 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 caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry
and expansion; 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 garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or
cortex; but our shirts are our liber, or true bark, which cannot be
removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all
races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is
desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on
himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and
preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old
philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one
thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and
cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers;
while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last
as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a
dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar,
and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made
at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a
suit, of his own earning, there will not be found wise men to do him
reverence?

  When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me
gravely, "They do not make them so now," not emphasizing the "They" at
all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I
find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot
believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this
oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought,
emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the
meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity
'They' are related to me, and what authority they may have in an
affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to
answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the
"they"- "It is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do
now." Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my
character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to
bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcee, 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. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was
handed down to us by a mummy.

  On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has
in this or any 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 religiously the
new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen