Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us,
for in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors
in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and _chapeau de bras_. In fact we are
really more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch
a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four
or five generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being
something that had escaped from somewhere.
Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made
no advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo
themselves, and do go fully clad--I am speaking exclusively of my own
sex--is about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I
wish I had the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to
inveigh against the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular
swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look like a poor species of bird
and gets him mistaken for the waiter. "As long as a man wears the modern
coat," says Leigh Hunt, "he has no right to despise any dress.
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