Dress.
There is nothing in which mankind display more caprice, than in dress; and it is curious to remark, that this caprice is most conspicuous in the more civilized countries. In London and Paris, the fashions of dress change every year, and in some things, every few weeks. There is a new style of bonnet in Paris at least every three months.
But in China and India, and indeed over all Asia, the fashions of dress are unchangeable. The people now wear almost exactly the same garments, of the same colors and the same forms, as a thousand years ago.
The country people of Europe, generally, have a fixed costume, which continues, with little change, from generation to generation; but in the great cities, all is variety and vicissitude. In this country we copy European fashions, and there are some silly people whose greatest desire is to be dressed in the Parisian style.
Now when we are told of the Chinese ladies, who have their feet bandaged in order to make them small, until they can hardly walk—thus rendering themselves miserable and useless, and all this to be thought genteel—we think them very absurd. But look at the picture, on the preceding page, and tell me if these ladies are not about as foolish. They are dressed in the fashion of Queen Elizabeth’s time, and it has been much imitated by the ladies of modern days.
But we must not laugh at the ladies only, for the other sex deserve a share of our notice. Foppery is not confined to any country. A young savage of the western woods, has often the ambition to figure as a gay fellow, as well as the New York or Boston dandy. He does not go to the tailor, to be made a man of, but he relies upon his own skill. He paints himself over with clay, of various colors, mixed with bears’ grease. One side of his face is made blue, and another yellow. On his breast a serpent is figured; on his back, a buffalo or a wolf. On his head he wears the feathers of an eagle; around his neck, the claws of the grisly bear; on his back is a bundle of scalps, and on his arms the skin of a skunk. Over his shoulder is a buffalo-robe decorated with a frill of quills, and ornamented with beads. Such is your dandy of savage life.
And now for the dandy of our cities. The great thing is to have abundance of hair; and the more it hangs over the eyes, and obtrudes itself around the nose and mouth and neck, and in every other place that may suggest the idea of discomfort or filthiness, so much the better, thinks the dandy. For my own part, I lay it down as an invariable rule, that if a youth displays an unusual quantity of hair or beard, he is deficient, to the same extent, in brains. I believe this is a safe ground of judgment. But still, it is the fashion, just now, to run to hair, and thus it seems our young men have an ambition to excel in that, in which, after all their efforts, the bear, the buffalo, and indeed most beasts, will always surpass them. When I see one of these whiskered, soap-locked fellows, I always think of the description that an Irish girl gave of a skunk that was rude to her, upon a certain occasion. As she went home, she carried evidence of the fact, and when the people asked what it meant—“Faith!” said she, “and it was a little hairy beast that did it!”
Spanish Names.—The love of long Christian names by the Spaniards has frequently been a subject of ridicule. A Spaniard on his travel, arrived in the night at a little village in France, in which there was but one hotel. As it was almost midnight, he knocked at the door a long time without hearing any one stir. At length the host, putting his head out of the chamber window, asked who was there. The Spaniard replied, “Don Juan Pedro, Hernandez, Rodriguez, Alvarez de Villanova, Count de Malafra, Cavellero de Santiago d’Alcantara.” “Mercy on me,” said the host, as he shut the window, “I have but two spare beds, and you ask me lodging for a score.”