Conclusion.
To what point are we come? Is the game of Beaver the expression of a passionate mass-protest against the furred face, or is it the forerunner of a revival of beards, that is, do we see here the shadow of that antient custom which led peoples to sacrifice yearly the animals who else were deities, whom they adored?[12] In any case the Beard is again burgeoning. But a few years gone the bearded were not, qua beards, of any importance, now they loom upon the social horizon considerably larger than a man’s hand. Of the importance of the Beard it may well be that the apogee is upon us. Perchance the Beard will again be invested with the dignity of ceremonial as in antient China. “After the coffining,” so we read of the obsequies of an officer, “the Master of the Ceremonies does away with his hair-tufts.”[13] Shall we live to see the Beard exalted as an horn on high? Will the game of Beaver re-instate the Beard as the Crimean campaign instituted the now almost extinct (but exquisite) moustache-whisker fitment, or will it drive the hairy to put off the whole armour of hairiness? Quien sabe? These things remain, in the charming phrase of M. Cliché, “on the knees of the gods,” but it is safe to assert that, even now, we can as a people, we English, rebut the accusation of Samuel Butler, “we often do not notice that a man has grown a beard.”[14]
[12] See Herodotus, ii., 42. [13] Chou Kung, The I-Li, c. xxxi. [14] Butler, The Notebooks, p. 311.
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