The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1879-09-12
And r hnow AZ we'll a. vo,, 40
Something In the Od- Clothes Line.

When look at pictures of people of
old times, often think what a curious
thing it is that the only apparent diff
ference between them and the people of
the present day is to be seen in their
clothes.
If we could take dozen or so of
ancient Greeks and Romans; some gen.
tlemen and ladies of the middle ages
party Of our great-grandfathers and
mothers, and some nice people who are
now living in the next street, and were
to dress all the women in calico frocks
and sun-bonnets, and all the men in
linen coats and trousers and broad
straw hats, with their hair cut short;
and were then to tumble them all up
together, and make them keep their
tongues quiet, it would be very difficult,
if not impossible, for a committee, unac-
quainted with any of the party, to pick
out the ancients, the middle-agers, or
the moderns.
Lady Jane Grey, or Cornelia, the
mother of the Gracchi, or Helen of
Troy, would not look unlike the other
women in sun-bonnets and calico frocks !;
and while there would be greater dif-
ference in the men, whose nationality
might show more strongly, Christopher
Columbus, Nero, and Marco Bozzaris
would be pretty much the same kind of
fellows as the other men of the party.
1t is certainly fact that there are
great many more points of strong re-
semblance between the people of past
ages and ourselves than most of us sup
pose. It is often very surprising, when
reading of the domestic life of the past,
to see how precisely similar, in some
respects, 1T was to our own. And, as L
have said, the people looked, with the
exception of their clothes, very much
as we dO-meaning by "we" the people
of the present day, all over the world.
In 1876, at the Centennial Exposition,
I saw a marble bust life size which
was a portrait of lady of ancient
Rome; There was only the head and
neck, the hair was dressed very plainly,
and it was astonishing how well that
bust would have answered for the por-
trait of lady of Thirty-fourth street,
New York, or the wife of gentleman
in Springfield, Ohio. The head and
face were just such head and face as /
had often seen, and the countenance
even seemed familiar to me.
But dress makes all the difference in
the world. Had met that lady attired
in her flowing Roman garments, with
her golden head-dress and her sandaled
feet, / should have had no thought of
Thirty-fourth street, or Springfield,
Ohio.
And 80 down the whole line of ages
you can tell, pretty nearly, when man
or woman lived, if you can but get an
idea of his or her clothes.
The next thing which strikes most of
us, when looking at the pictures of old
time people, is feeling of wonder how
they ever could have been willing to
make such scarecrows of themselves.
To be sure. we are willing to admire
the flowing robes of Greece and Rome,
although we feel quite sure that our
style of dress is much more sensible,
and we have an admiration for soldier
clad in armor, as well as for the noble
men and gentry who figured, some hun
dreds of years ago, in their splendid
velvets and laces, their feathers ard
cooked hats, and their diamond-hilted
swords.
But, as rule, the garments of our
ancestors appear very ridiculous to us.
If we did not have good reasons for be-
lief to the contrary, we should be very
apt to consider them set of fools.
1t even seems little wonderful that
people should be able to invent such
curious fashions of dressing themselves
PAUL Fort.