The masculine smile is, however, wearing thinner, as the absurd despotism is now almost as great among the stronger sex. Here also a group of commercial mathematicians evolve, every few months, a new combination of brim and crown and curve, and artists design new patterns of cloth and new contours of garment, and tyrannical journalists hold up to public execration the man of means or position who dares to find last year's fashion sufficiently comfortable or decorative. "Not worn now, sir," says the shopman, with indulgent smile, when you go to renew the hat or coat that has pleased you. The bewildering thing is, not that manufacturers should be eager to sell us new garments every few weeks, but that we bow with such docility to this ludicrous fiction of monarchy. Long trousers or short trousers, creased trousers or turned-up trousers, tight coats or loose coats, bowlers or trilbys--we listen submissively to the mandate, without the least consideration of our appearance or convenience.
Indeed, the only things that are permanent in this extravagant procession of fashions are the things that are ugly, inconvenient, or unhealthy, especially on the masculine side. The silk hat and the hard felt hat linger as if in these extraordinary creations the manufacturer had discovered the ideal head-covering. The swallow-tail coat survives as if æsthetics could advance no further in the attiring of wealthy men; even the buttons at the back, to which our fiery ancestor attached his sword, must not be abandoned. The more comfortable dinner-jacket remains a privileged client at the gate until some audacious peer or prince will dispel the oppressive reverence for the ancient swallow-tail; and peers and princes know how dangerous it is to tamper with the spirit of reverence. The starched collar and shirt are as rigidly prescribed as sacred vestments on high occasions. The lady must still hang a thick and heavy screen of cloth from her hips; first having it made too long and then holding it up with her hand in order to escape the rich organic deposit on our streets and the filth with which we suffer "domestic pets" to make our squares hideous. Her abdominal organs must, if one may credit the marvellous photographs published by the corset-makers, be reconstructed every few years to accommodate the latest scheme of body-curves. And from these upper reaches of our intellectual world, the tyranny descends through level after level of the community until it lays its last stern injunctions on the junior clerk and the post-office assistant; or passes beyond the seas and compels the Chinaman or the Japanese to discard his beautiful robe in favour of a frock-coat and silk hat, or a striped tweed and bowler, when he presents himself at the entrance-gate to civilisation.