Our Near Connection With Them Entrances Our Self-Esteem.

Their prim manners, their affected bows and courtesies, the 'dear Mr. So-and-So' of the wife to her

Husband, the 'Sir' and 'Madam' of the children to their parents, make us wonder whether their flesh and blood were ever as warm as ours; or whether they were a race of prigs and puppets?

My memory carries me back to the remnants of these lost externals - that which is lost was nothing more; the men and women were every whit as human as ourselves. My half-sisters wore turbans with birds-of-paradise in them. My mother wore gigot sleeves; but objected to my father's pigtail, so cut it off. But my father powdered his head, and kept to his knee- breeches to the last; so did all elderly gentlemen, when I was a boy. For the matter of that, I saw an old fellow with a pigtail walking in the Park as late as 1845. He, no doubt, was an ultra-conservative.

Fashions change so imperceptibly that it is difficult for the historian to assign their initiatory date. Does the young dandy of to-day want to know when white ties came into vogue? - he knows that his great-grandfather wore a white neckcloth, and takes it for granted, may be, that his grandfather did so too. Not a bit of it. The young Englander of the Coningsby type - the Count d'Orsays of my youth, scorned the white tie alike of their fathers and their sons.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 89 of 404
Words from 23288 to 23543 of 106633