|FEW know how voraciously we go for anything in the fashion line. Many
of our exchanges are fashion magazines, and nothing is read with such
avidity as these highly pictorial aggregations of literature. If
there are going to be any changes in the male wardrobe this winter, it
behooves us to know what they are. We intend to do so. It is our high
prerogative and glorious privilege to live in a land of information.
If we do not provide ourself with a few, it is our own fault. Man has
spanned the ocean with an electric cable, and runs his street cars
with another cable that puts people out of their misery as quick as
a giant-powder caramel in a man's chest-protector, under certain
circumstances. Science has done almost everything for us, except to
pay our debts without leaning toward repudiation. We are making rapid
strides in the line of progression. That is, the scientists are. Every
little while you can hear a scientist burst a basting thread off his
overalls, while making a stride.
It is equally true that we are marching rapidly along in the line of
fashion. Change, unceasing change, is the war cry, and he who undertakes
to go through the winter with the stage costumes of the previous winter,
will find, as Voltaire once said, that it is a cold day.
We look with great concern upon the rapid changes which a few weeks have
made. The full voluptuous swell and broad cincha of the chaparajo have
given place to the tight pantaletts with feathers on them, conveying
the idea that they cannot be removed until death, or an earthquake shall
occur..
"Chaps," as they are vulgarly called, deserve more than a passing
notice. They are made of leather with fronts of dog-skin with the hair
on. The inside breadths are of calf or sheep-skin, made plain,
but trimmed down the side seam with buckskin bugles and oil-tanned
bric-a-brac of the time of Michael Angelo Kelley. On the front are plain
pockets used for holding the ball programme and the "pop." The pop is a
little design in nickel and steel, which is often used as an inhaler.
It clears out the head, and leaves the nasal passages and phrenological
chart out on the sidewalk, where pure air is abundant. "Chaps" are
rather attractive while the wearer is on horseback, or walking toward
you, but when he chasses and "all waltz to places," you discern that
the seat of the garment has been postponed _sine die_. This, at first,
induces a pang in the breast of the beholder. Later, however, you become
accustomed to the barren and perhaps even stern demeanor of the wearer.
You gradually gain control of yourself and master your raging desire
to rush up and pin the garment together. The dance goes on. The _elite_
take an adult's dose of ice-cream and other refreshments; the leader of
the mad waltz glides down the hall with his mediæval "chaps," swishing
along as he sails; the violin gives a last shriek; the superior fiddle
rips the robe of night wide open, with a parting bzzzzt; the mad frolic
is over, and $5 have gone into the dim and unfrequented freight depot of
the frog-pond-environed past.