EXTRAVAGANCE, MODERN
Two hundred and sixty dollars were paid this season for a hat! I know this to be true, because I saw the hat and the woman who bought it, and I was told the price. What was it? A handful of straw, a wisp of tulle, and a spray of feather. Two hundred and sixty dollars!
Of course, this is not to be taken as an average price, even among the very rich. But the averages, as well as the single, instances of modern extravagance are startling. Fifteen years ago twenty-five dollars—thirty at the outside—would have bought the most elaborate bonnet in the most expensive shopping center of the world, New York. To-day the Fifth Avenue shops are asking thirty dollars for the plainest domestic toque or shade hat, and have shelves full of French importations at prices ranging from $100 to $175. The ten-dollar “trimmed” sailor hat used to be worn with serge dresses; the mull hats costing five dollars; the big rough garden hats at about the same price; the leghorns that used to run as high as fifteen, even twenty dollars, to-day have been replaced by thirty-dollar round hats, fifty-dollar picture hats, fifty-dollar lingerie hats, and hand-made straws running into the three numerals.—Emily Post, Everybody’s Magazine.
(1006)
EXTREMITY, GOD IN
In the far, forgotten lands,
By the world’s last gulf of night,
Gasps a naked human soul,
Writhing up and falling back,
Screaming for a God who cares.