Mourning-rings have an air of extreme respectability; for they are always suggestive of a legacy, and of the fact that you have been connected with somebody who was not buried at the expense of the parish.
Studs should be selected with the greatest possible care, and in our opinion the small gold ones can only be worn by a perfect gentleman; for whilst they perform their required office, they do not distract the attention from the quality and whiteness of your linen. Some that we have seen were evidently intended for cabinet pictures, rifle targets and breast-plates.
Pins.—These necessary adjuncts to the cravat of a gentleman have undergone a singular revolution during late years; but we confess we are admirers of the present fashion, for if it is desirable to indulge in an ornament, it is equally desirable that everybody should be gratified by the exhibition thereof. We presume that it is with this commendable feeling that pins’-heads (whose smallness in former days became a proverb) should now resemble the apex of a beadle’s staff; and, as though to make “assurance doubly sure,” a plurality is absolutely required for the decoration of a gentleman. In these times, when political partisanship is so exceedingly violent, why not make the pins indicative of the opinions of the wearer, as the waistcoat was in the days of Fox. We could suggest some very appropriate designs; for instance, the heads of Peel and Wakley, connected by a very slight link—Sibthorp and Peter Borthwick by a series of long-car rings—Muntz and D’Israeli cut out of very hard wood, and united by a hair-chain; and many others too numerous to mention.
HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY.
PARODIED BY A XX TEETOTALLER.
To drink, or not to drink? That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler inwardly to suffer
The pangs and twitchings of uneasy stomach,
Or to take brandy-toddy ’gainst the colic,