American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1872-05-25

WHETHER to button or to inhibition the
lowermost button of his vest was a vital
question with young Toots at his first
party When a man came in with the lower
button buttoned, what should the ditfident
and deprecatory Toots do but button up
his vest at the bottom! But seeing the
next man with the lower button open,
Toots in bewildered perplexity relaxed
his own. ''To be or not to be-" said
Hamlet in his despair, "To button or
not to button," said the excited Toots in
his despair.
Now the trouble with Toots was lack
of what the French call aplomb-straight-
up-and-down-e dness. He had no conf
dence in his own judgment in a matter
that was, to his own locution, cot no
consequence at all" Nine-tenths of the
men and women in society are quite as
cowardly in trifles as was Mr.. Toots. The
despotism of fashion lives upon this
cowardice. Men and women wait to see
what shade of gloves is proper-that is to
say, what shade of gloves their next neigh
Dor wears-before they venture to decide
for themselves. Taste is nothing, pictur
esqueness is out of the question; the hair
must be long or short, the hat large or
small, the panier big or little, the vest
buttoned at the bottom or not, not accord
ing to individual taste or preference, but
according to the prevailing custom. And
who then set the fashions? The people
who dare to do as they please.
For instance, it is still an open question
whether or not gloves are to be worn at a
gentleman's party. At the last one we
attended, feeling, like Mr.. Toots, a little
doubtful on the point, we counted and
found that just one half the guests had
brought their kids. But gentleman of
our acquaintance recently tried a more
curious experiment. He found himself
at a gentleman's party without his gloves,
and noticing the evident division of
opinion in regard to the wearing of
gloves, he mischievously undertook to
abolish them for the evening. He man
aged to get into conversation with each of
the gentlemen who wore gloves, and then
spoke little decidedly of the improperly
of wearing gloves. The result was that
he found each man in Toots's state of
mind, and before the evening was over
there was not a glove in the room. 1t
only wants little positiveness to make
fashions.
One of the worst effects of this cow
ardice is that it gives, or seems to give,
narrow-brained people right to dictate.
The more one is slave to custom,
the more does one resent any asser-
ton of personal liberty on the part of
others. Il have no respect for him, said
a man to us the other day in speaking of
an eminent author; che parts his hair in
the middle" And he spoke as though
parting the hair in the middle were a
capital offense. Now, the author in ques-
ton may regard part in the middle as
more becoming than part on the side.
VIVA. right have the whole family of
Grundies to prescribe where a mans hair
shall be parted?
To tolerate differences is the first lesson
that generous culture teaches man,
and our sensitiveness about matters which
are, like the vest-buttons of the gentle
Toots, ''of no consequence at ALL" only
goes to show the semi barbarous state of
what we call civilized society.-Hearth
and Home.