THE SUITS COME HOME.
No. 1 rushed into my room. “Look here,” he exclaimed “there is a mistake somewhere. These clothes must be yours. They were never made for me.”
No. 2 entered. “These d——d trowsers must be yours. They were never made for me.”
And in a minute No. 3 came in with the same exclamation. An examination of the addresses on the wrapping paper showed, however, that each had received the clothes intended for him, notwithstanding that each suit would have better fitted some other man. And then I soothed them by explaining that the English tailor makes all clothes alike; that he goes upon the supposition that every man should be so high, and so broad, and that measurement is a mere form gone through with as a professional fraud, the same as a lawyer looks the wisest when he knows the least; and that to make any fuss about it would result in nothing, and the only thing to do was to take them, pay for them, and wear them while in England. They were no worse off than everybody else, and that they should be philosophical and content. One remarked, with a great deal of truth, that all the philosophy in the world wouldn’t make a six foot man look well in a pair of trowsers constructed for a five foot sixer, and another that he knew of no philosophy that would support one under the trying affliction of a coat that bagged on the shoulders and in the back, and that had no more shape to it than a bean sack.
That is where they were wrong. That is what philosophy is made for. England has given the world its greatest philosophers, her philosophers being made necessary by her tailors, the same as every country that cherishes an especially poisonous serpent, also grows a particularly powerful antidote, and the snake and antidote grow together.
The women dress a trifle worse than the men—their dressmakers are a trifle worse than their tailors. If an English woman would only buy her gowns ready made, it would be better, for there would be a chance—only a slight one, it is true, but yet a chance—of her getting a fit; but she will not. She goes to the most expensive modiste, “to get something good,” and then all hope of a prettily dressed woman is gone, and gone forever.