a pair of boots can be hartogs for a year. After that they are past further mending, whereas a hat is precious for a lustrum.

While an old hat is so good a friend, a new hat is usually an enemy. Few men have come out of their hatter's satisfied with their purchase-it always seems as if a rival maker must keep better shapes. The wise man either permits his wife to choose hats for him, or he adheres continually to one shape, as the late Marquis of Ailesbury did. Among the many anecdotes told of that eccentric nobleman there is one bearing upon his emphatic taste in hats. The story shows him standing bareheaded in his hatter's, waiting for the return of the assistant who was serving him. At that moment entered a short-sighted bishop, who walked directly to the marquis, and, handing him his hat, asked if he had one like it. The hereditary legislator took the hat and subjected its rigging to careful scrutiny. No,' he said at length, as he returned it, no, and I'm dashed if I'd wear it if I had.' The tall hat, unless worn at an individual angle such as that of the late Sir Robert Peel, is reticent. It tells little. The bowler is hardly more communicative. But there are other shapes which are garrulous as one can wish-the wideawake, the colonial, the squash; these have distinct connotations and offer volumes about their wearers.

6

Ties almost always are trustworthy guides to personality, and with the fanciful nothing-not even unanswered letters-accumulates like them. Some men cannot resist a new tie; others keep a fresh one for every day in the year. I remember that a master at school rang the changes on his store so repeatedly that to-morrow's colour would be the subject of wagers between those boys who had anything to bet. To wear no tie is a peculiarity of lay preachers. On the other hand, a red tie allied to general negligence of attire is often a mark of aversion from church and adherence to a Fabian policy. Some men cling to one colour to the day of their death. Mr. Ruskin has in this way clung to light blue. A certain notable philologist is similarly faithful to pink, while the representative English humorist makes black his only wear. In a shop off Piccadilly ties, quite needlessly, are called 'neckwear.'

In winter there is nothing more comfortable than hartogs; but in summer flannels supersede them. The joy of flannels is not to be translated into words; it is one of the few secrets of man that women will never wholly comprehend. The joy of beer

is another; of tobacco, a third. Buoyancy, liberty, the power to do these are put on with flannels. Flannels are as levelling almost as nakedness. On the cricket field all men are equal. Has not Richardson bowled Lord Hawke these many seasons? and I doubt not but he would york even the Prince of Wales. But once, in appearance at any rate, there were distinctions. In the old days, when George Parr hit to long-leg for six, and George Freeman bowled liked lightning, flannels were a distinguishing sign. In those days the professional was marked by his dress for the dependent he was, and the Daily Chronicle' will not allow him to be. He wore a coloured shirt and his whites were yellow. You may see them in old photographs. My earliest recollection of county cricket is a Sussex and Surrey match at Brighton twenty years ago; and I remember distinctly that Pooley's flannels were dingy, Jupp's grey. But now, except in a few cases, there is nothing to distinguish the two classes of cricketers. A change has come over the professional, and his flannels now shine like an amateur's. From the pavilion a stranger would find it impossible to pick out the pros. They sometimes even wear ties, a thing unheard of in the 'sixties and not to be endured. Yet this new sartorial complexion which the game wears is good, for it emphasises the socialism of cricket. The watering-place in summer also has its flannels, but these are not as the flannels of the field. Of all watering-places none has such individual attire as Bournemouth, but then Bournemouth is not, strictly speaking, a watering-place at all, but a cod-liver-oiling place. At Bournemouth you see natural wool. There, too, are digitated socks.

Cricket is comparatively a fully dressed pursuit. Rowing requires far less clothing, and the young men who run through the less populous London suburbs of an evening are almost too airily clad. Except for comfort clothes are seldom a positive necessity. A naked parliament would make equally good laws, although caricaturists might object. The only profession to which clothes are indispensable is that of the pickpocket--and then vicariously. At a pinch most of us could, if need were, very creditably get through our daily avocations unclad. Perhaps the finest proof of the superfluousness of clothes is the taking of Lungtungpen, when the whole invading host had not 'betune' them enough to dust a fife. None the less, for Europeans, even in the most oppressive weather, something is more comfortable and cool than nothing. Our skins are too tender. How our

remote forefathers contrived to be satisfied with woad, I cannot imagine; either the climate of early Britain was much milder or woad was very warming. On few days of the year now is it hot enough for nothing. On those days white linen ducks are very pleasant, and alpaca coats have their adherents. Limp collars are an alleviation; indeed, in sultry seasons the starched collar is the first to go. It may be said that no déshabille is comely or even presentable, although I suppose that it would not matter to us-we should not be critical-if the lawyer's clerk who announced a legacy arrived breathless in nothing but an umbrella. Yet déshabille can be impressive, as we learn in a letter of Charles Dickens to the late James T. Fields, the American publisher. Dickens wrote: I dreamed that somebody was dead. It was a private gentleman, and a particular friend; and I was greatly overcome when the news was broken to me (very delicately) by a gentleman in a cocked hat, top boots, and a sheet. Nothing else. "Good God!" I said, "is he dead ?" "He is as dead, sir," rejoined the gentleman, "as a door-nail. But we must all die, Mr. Dickens, sooner or later, my dear sir." "Ah!" I said; "yes, to be sure. Very true. But what did he die of?" The gentleman burst into a flood of tears, and said, in a voice broken by emotion, "He christened his youngest child, sir, with a toasting fork!" Some sensitive men refuse to appear in déshabille on any terms. There was a lovable English clergyman,' says Mark Twain in " A Tramp Abroad," 'who did not get to table d'hôte at all. His breeches had turned up missing, and without any equivalent. He said he was not more particular than other people, but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without any breeches was almost sure to excite remark.'

The completest déshabille is obtainable in the tropics. The late Henry Drummond once wrote home from Central Africa that he had nothing on but a helmet and three mosquitoes. Sydney Smith, who was the first man to pray in August for the power to take off his flesh and sit in his bones (a blessed condition, which, on paper at least, has been made possible by Professor Röntgen), described the height of bliss attainable by a Sierra Leone native, to be sitting in one half of a melon, with the other half on his head, eating the pulp.

The opponents of the press ought to bear it in mind that no substitute for clothing is more effective than a newspaper-that

is to say, no sudden substitute. The American enthusiast who recently walked round the world for a wager wore only a copy of the New York Herald' until he had amassed, by exhibiting himself, enough money to buy clothes; and now and then come tidings of a party of tourists who have escaped from the attentions of Italian banditti or Hungarian brigands in nothing more substantial than last week's Times.' It seems to be established that when in difficulties for clothes the first thought of civilised man is for a newspaper; just as the first thought of primitive man was for a leaf. Not the least funny story in that diverting book, 'Many Cargoes,' tells of a captain who lost his cloes at cribbage' and was found the next day by his rescuer 'in a pair of socks and last week's paper.' This, as we have seen, is not a particularly novel position, but what distinguished Captain Bross from his companions in this form of misfortune was his occupation. When discovered he was reading the advertisements.' That is true philosophy! There is an old but honourable story of a traveller in Norway who took advantage of a two hours' break in the railway journey to leave the train and climb to the summit of a little hill near enough to the station to enable him to hear the warning bell and of sufficient altitude to command a wide and varied prospect. It was perfect weather, and he sat down on a mound. and lost himself in contemplation of the scene. The bell rang, he leaped up, hastened to the station, regained his carriage (of which he was the sole occupant) and the train started again. Very few minutes passed before he was aware that the mound upon which he had been sitting was an ant-hill, that the ants were of a peculiarly savage disposition, and that two or three regiments of them were accompanying him on his journey in order to continue the attack. His course was clear. He pulled off his trousers, and, leaning from the window, shook the ants out on to the line. But at the moment when he was withdrawing the garment the train entered a tunnel so narrow that the trousers were dashed from his hands by the brickwork. He sank back on the seat in blank despair. Not another pair of trousers did he possess ; he dared not get out; he was a nervous, self-conscious man; he could speak no Norwegian. In this dilemma he bethought him of his store of papers; and by the time the next station was reached, he had devised a skirt of them. No sooner had the train stopped than he clasped this covering about him firmly with one hand, and opening the door, made a break for the

station master's office. The passengers and officials were aware of the flashing transit of a mystical figure, and that was all. Once in the office, he built a rampart of baggage, and crouching behind it called for some one capable of tackling an Englishman. His troubles were even yet not quite over, for the only interpreter in the place turned out to be the village schoolmistress. The moral of which story is that when we travel we should carry either a change of clothes or a bundle of newspapers.

Of the clothes of women I know little except that the fashions change much too often, and that there seems to be nothing so difficult for a girl to do as to dress in such a way as will please her elder sister.

E. V. LUCAS.