snubbed by the woman I loved as man never loved before--by the way,
it's really extraordinary what a variety of ways of loving there must

be. We all do it as it was never done before. I don't know how our
great-grandchildren will manage. They will have to do it on their

heads by their time if they persist in not clashing with any previous
method.

Well, as I was saying, when these unpleasant sort of things happened
and I felt crushed, I put on all my best clothes and went out. It

brought back my vanishing self-esteem. In a glossy new hat and a pair
of trousers with a fold down the front (carefully preserved by keeping

them under the bed--I don't mean on the floor, you know, but between
the bed and the mattress), I felt I was somebody and that there were

other washerwomen: ay, and even other girls to love, and who would
perhaps appreciate a clever, good-looking young fellow. I didn't

care; that was my reckless way. I would make love to other maidens.
I felt that in those clothes I could do it.

They have a wonderful deal to do with courting, clothes have. It is
half the battle. At all events, the young man thinks so, and it

generally takes him a couple of hours to get himself up for the
occasion. His first half-hour is occupied in trying to decide whether

to wear his light suit with a cane and drab billycock, or his black
tails with a chimney-pot hat and his new umbrella. He is sure to be

unfortunate in either decision. If he wears his light suit and takes
the stick it comes on to rain, and he reaches the house in a damp and

muddy condition and spends the evening trying to hide his boots. If,
on the other hand, he decides in favor of the top hat and

umbrella--nobody would ever dream of going out in a top hat without an
umbrella; it would be like letting baby (bless it!) toddle out without

its nurse. How I do hate a top hat! One lasts me a very long while,
I can tell you. I only wear it when--well, never mind when I wear it.

It lasts me a very long while. I've had my present one five years.
It was rather old-fashioned last summer, but the shape has come round

again now and I look quite stylish.
But to return to our young man and his courting. If he starts off

with the top hat and umbrella the afternoon turns out fearfully hot,
and the perspiration takes all the soap out of his mustache and

converts the beautifully arranged curl over his forehead into a limp
wisp resembling a lump of seaweed. The Fates are never favorable to

the poor wretch. If he does by any chance reach the door in proper
condition, she has gone out with her cousin and won't be back till

late.
How a young lover made ridiculous by the gawkiness of modern costume

must envy the picturesque gallants of seventy years ago! Look at them
(on the Christmas cards), with their curly hair and natty hats, their

well-shaped legs incased in smalls, their dainty Hessian boots, their
ruffling frills, their canes and dangling seals. No wonder the little

maiden in the big poke-bonnet and the light-blue sash casts down her
eyes and is completely won. Men could win hearts in clothes like

that. But what can you expect from baggy trousers and a monkeyjacket?
Clothes have more effect upon us than we imagine. Our deportment

depends upon our dress. Make a man get into seedy, worn-out rags, and
he will skulk along with his head hanging down, like a man going out

to fetch his own supper beer. But deck out the same article in
gorgeous raiment and fine linen, and he will strut down the main

thoroughfare, swinging his cane and looking at the girls as perky as a
bantam cock.

Clothes alter our very nature. A man could not help being fierce and
daring with a plume in his bonnet, a dagger in his belt, and a lot of

puffy white things all down his sleeves. But in an ulster he wants to
get behind a lamp-post and call police.

I am quite ready to admit that you can find sterling merit, honest
worth, deep affection, and all such like virtues of the

roast-beef-and-plum-pudding school as much, and perhaps more, under
broadcloth and tweed as ever existed beneath silk and velvet; but the

spirit of that knightlychivalry that "rode a tilt for lady's love"
and "fought for lady's smiles" needs the clatter of steel and the

rustle of plumes to summon it from its grave between the dusty folds
of tapestry and underneath the musty leaves of moldering chronicles.

The world must be getting old, I think; it dresses so very soberly
now. We have been through the infant period of humanity, when we used

to run about with nothing on but a long, loose robe, and liked to have
our feet bare. And then came the rough, barbaric age, the boyhood of

our race. We didn't care what we wore then, but thought it nice to
tattoo ourselves all over, and we never did our hair. And after that

the world grew into a young man and became foppish. It decked itself
in flowing curls and scarletdoublets, and went courting, and

bragging, and bouncing--making a brave show.
But all those merry, foolish days of youth are gone, and we are very

sober, very solemn--and very stupid, some say--now. The world is a
grave, middle-aged gentleman in this nineteenth century, and would be

shocked to see itself with a bit of finery on. So it dresses in black
coats and trousers, and black hats, and black boots, and, dear me, it

is such a very respectable gentleman--to think it could ever have gone
gadding about as a troubadour or a knight-errant, dressed in all those

fancy colors! Ah, well! we are more sensible in this age.
Or at least we think ourselves so. It is a general theory nowadays

that sense and dullness go together.
Goodness is another quality that always goes with blackness. Very

good people indeed, you will notice, dress altogether in black, even
to gloves and neckties, and they will probably take to black shirts

before long. Medium goods indulge in light trousers on week-days, and
some of them even go so far as to wear fancy waistcoats. On the other

hand, people who care nothing for a future state go about in light
suits; and there have been known wretches so abandoned as to wear a

white hat. Such people, however, are never spoken of in genteel
society, and perhaps I ought not to have referred to them here.

By the way, talking of light suits, have you ever noticed how people
stare at you the first time you go out in a new light suit They do

not notice it so much afterward. The population of London have got
accustomed to it by the third time you wear it. I say "you," because

I am not speaking from my own experience. I do not wear such things
at all myself. As I said, only sinful people do so.

I wish, though, it were not so, and that one could be good, and
respectable, and sensible without making one's self a guy. I look in

the glass sometimes at my two long, cylindrical bags (so picturesquely
rugged about the knees), my stand-up collar and billycock hat, and

wonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Then
wild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be good

and respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told; so that don't
matter.) I want to put on lavender-colored tights, with red velvet

breeches and a green doublet slashed with yellow; to have a light-blue
silk cloak on my shoulder, and a black eagle's plume waving from my

hat, and a big sword, and a falcon, and a lance, and a prancing horse,
so that I might go about and gladden the eyes of the people. Why

should we all try to look like ants crawling over a dust-heap? Why
shouldn't we dress a little gayly? I am sure if we did we should be

happier. True, it is a little thing, but we are a little race, and
what is the use of our pretending otherwise and spoiling fun? Let

philosophers get themselves up like old crows if they like. But let
me be a butterfly.

Women, at all events, ought to dress prettily. It is their duty.
They are the flowers of the earth and were meant to show it up. We

abuse them a good deal, we men; but, goodness knows, the old world
would be dull enough without their dresses and fair faces. How they

brighten up every place they come into! What a sunny commotion
they--relations, of course---make in our dingy bachelor chambers! and

what a delightfullitter their ribbons and laces, and gloves and hats,
and parasols and 'kerchiefs make! It is as if a wandering rainbow had