Don’t judge a man by his clothes. Can you tell what the circus is
going to be like by looking at the Italian sunset pictures on the
fence? Do you value the turkey for its plumage? And isn’t the skin of
the mink the most, and, indeed, the only valuable part of him? There
be men, fair to look upon, who wander up and down this country, and
sit in the coolest places on the hotel piazzas, who are arrayed in
fine linen and cardinal socks, and who have to hold their hand over
their scarf-pin when they want to see the moonlight, who, unassisted
and unprompted, do not possess the discretion to come in when it
rains, and don’t know enough to punch a hole in the snow with an
umbrella--new, soft snow at that, without any crust on it. Now and
then, son, before you are as old as Methuselah, you will meet a man
who wears a hat that is worth twice as much as the head it covers. On
the other hand, don’t fall into the error of believing that all the
goodness, and honesty, and intelligence in the world goes about in
shreds and patches. We have seen the tramp dressed in worse rags than
you could rake out of the family rag-bag, and more dirt and hair on
him than would suffice to protect a horse, who would step up to the
front door and demand three kinds of cake, half an apple pie, and then
steal every moveable thing in the yard, kill the dog, choke up the
pump with sand, tramp on the pansy bed and girdle the cherry trees,
because he couldn’t carry them away. Good clothes or bad are never an
infallible index to a man that is in them.