The St. Charles herald. [volume] (Hahnville, La.) 1873-1993, 1883-07-21
ABOUT HATS.


It's strange how hats expand their brims as
ripper years invade,
As if, when life had reached it's noon, it
wanted them for shade"
'Shoot the haiti cries the youthful
street Arab whenever particu-
larly fashionable and elegant tile passes
by His remark is an abridgement of
history, and had its origin, no doubt,
with the renowned William Tell. Moth
ing would give the street gamin more
pleasure than the destruction of this
badge of aristocracy, which to his dem
ocratic fancy is very offensive, for he is
reader of character, and at once de-
cides in his own mind that fine glossy
stove-pipe hat must of necessity belong
either to dandy-a creature he de-
spises-or newly-married man, his
legitimate prey. He knows that man
who amounts to anything usually wears
shocking bad hat, with dents and dis
figurements enough to give it character,
and he has great respect for that kind
of hat, and can easily distinguish it
from the battered and disreputable sort
that has been out over night with a
''brick'' in it. And the boy is right.
A new hat has nothing to commend it.
hOAC 10 III Ill IL, III Is Sill
ply piece of merchandise; it has no
idiosyncrasies; no magnetism. Let a
party of gentlemen go out of a public
hall or dining room and ask for their
hats; Smith gets Browns hat. They
are both z size; both look the same out
wardly; Brown puts his on; his head at
once becomes as uneasy as the one that
wore crown; he slants it down over
his bump of benevolence; he tips itover
on combativeness, then he tears it off
and says: '"This isn't my hat" just as
Smith offers his solo: This isn't nv
hat. They exchange, and the two hats
that are as much alike as two peas fit
their respective heads as if they had
been nodded into them.
The hat is so much part of a man
that it becomes responsive to his actions
and opinions, and a silent but active
expression of his thoughts. "Hats off, ~
cries an authority, and off they go. You
will know gentleman by the manner
of his touching his hat. 1t is royal
salute when lifted with a chivalrous
hand. That business pendulum be-
tween the upper and the lower world
the elevator-may be filled with men
all with their hats on; enter, one little
weak, defenseless woman, instantly
every hat is DOTTED. Why, they couldn't
do more than that for the Queen of
England! And it is thus they recog-
niZe the queen of womanhood.
The hat is often q vehicle for the
transmission of charities. 1t was a col
ored minister who sent his hat down
from the pulpit by his ancient deacon
and received it back empty, The old
preacher was equal to the occasion; he
looked into the hat then at his people.
''Let us pray" he said, "and tank de
Lawd / got my hat back from dis con-
gregation."
A woman's hat has no value, it can
not be used to take up a collection OF
bail out boat, nor can she cover her
face with it at church while she saws her
prayers. like him of whom a poet
wrote:
ITO church he went with head bowed down
To read best waterproof within the crown"
Women's hats are not historic if we ex-
eept the Gainsborough hat of the lovely
Countess of Devonshire. Rubens
painted the hat into immortality.
A political mass meeting is the place
to study hats-one in Chicago, for in
stance, when Long John, Daddy Hal
pine and few other notables were
present. The Republican hat was a
soft, wide-awake; the Democratic hat a,
stiff beaver with the nap crushed the
wrong way, and it had tread-on-my-
coat-tails-if-you-dare air about it. 1t
was well pulled back and the brim
spread like an awning.
There is the wedding hat-when
grandpa was a young man-and it,
though napless. has still an air of hav-
ing been asleep for a quarter of CEN
tury. When hat gets old enough it
becomes picturesque and has pathetic
side, too, like the hat of the old school
master:
We sat down in a row to see
His WORKOUT hat come up the hill.
Twas hanging up at home-a quill
Notched down and sticking in the band"
The tall hat enjoys the distinction of
being the only one that can be used as
memorial to grief.
Sundays all day in the door he sat,
string of withered-up Grape on his hat:
The crown had fallen against his head
And half-sewed in with a shoemaker's
thread.
Sometimes with his hard and toil-worn hand
He would smooth and straighten the faded
band;
Thinking, perhaps, of little mound
Black with nettles the whole year round"
There is heroic quantity in a hat,
too, as Bret Harte tells us in his fine
poem John Burns, of Gettysburg, of
whom he recites: