National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1884-05-01
eATu,s CENTRALIZED HAT.n
The Curious Web of Fiction which
George Alfred Townsend weoyes.

The Curious Web OF Fiction which
George Alfred Townsend weaye@
George Alfred Townsend has found time
amid his multifarious labors as newspaper
correspondent to write novel, to which no
has given tho somewhat fanciful name of
Tho Entailed Hat" Tho story deals with
tho conditions of society, tho customs, and
modes Of thought which obtained in Della
ware in the second quarter of the present
century. 1t begins in a pretty little village,
where an humble-born citizen is seon wearing
q hat entirely out of fashion and probably 100
or 200 years old. 1t was steeple.crowned and
had very large brim. All tho other people
Of the village wore hats Of the ordinary modern
pattern; so here was man segregated, soli-
tary, separated from his kind, not by any &C.
ton of his heart but by the mere intervcn-
ton of hat,
The author, in looking over some old
family papers, found that ono Of his ancestors
had been left a hat and no moro of his
fathers estate. Nenturing to wear IL the
town derides him. Ho is q mpn of intense
Puritan nature, somewhat Of the type of the
forest grocer and saloon keeper, but with
vague reminiscence behind him of q once
strong aud Characteristic descent. SO he
suffers for his hat aud makes up his mind
that the time shall come when his society
will honor that old article of head dress.
| Having no friends no shuts himself up
and studies and schemes, and by
the old-fashioned arts of curbstone
money lending and usury he rises
| in Importance till he has devourod the sub
stance of the most important person in tho
town, judge who bears the illustrious name
of Mrs. Con. Washington's first husband, aud
! who was of the same family. This Judge
Gusts has daughter who alone of human
/ beings once showed q tenderness for this
hat wonror, and once put a flower in his
hat. Ho offers to marry her, and by that
sacrifice restore to her ruined parents their
homestead and their fortune, which had been
consumed in n foolish effort to begin tho
manufacture of iron in region not adapted
to that industry.
For tho sake of restoring her family to
comfort and afiluence, she resolves to make
| the sacrifice. They arc married, but the
husband is taken sick of malurial fever on
tho day Of the nuptials. Tho newly-made
wife has an opportunity of studying the hus-
band whom she has wooded as he lies on q
bed Of pain, and she discovers in him a gem
uine manhood, such as she supposed could
only belong to patrician stock. The purpose
of the author is to show that the poor
whites" may have inherited qualities from
remote ancestors which left them above the
arstocracy by whom they ore despised.
About the : time of the marriage the
young demon Of steam Is let loose upon our
continent. The owner of "the entailed hat
advances money to litigant in great canal
suit and starts to regenerate his region and
civilize 1t by building q railroad through the
forests. His contemporaries hate him on &C
count of tho hat ho wears and regard him as
o usurping, brutal fellow, without feeling
and only given to money making. The pur.
pose of tho author is to put men of thrift and
enterprise in their proper place, and beginning
| with thia fnraat mnprhanE Mt the lowest nOinI
he is carried upward until we recognize onC
of tho heroes of our period, who 10 ap
preciated too late.
In the family of the great stakeholder
who Is connected with Gen. Washington, W,
see the weaknesses that prove all that live
to have been of ono blood. His daughter
maid is his own child. She is to DO pun
ished for the messlliance of her young mis-
tress. She is sold, but escapes into fret
state. One character of the village Is
sort of simplo.minded white fellow, who was
q natural lover of the yellow girls, and who
without doing any evil, but like poor, half
idiot, obeying the plain instincts of his being
cruelty suffers for an ofense in his hoat
dress, which confounds him with the wearei
of "the entailed hat" Tho dying years of tn,
African slave trade are revealed here
mixed up with the time of our American
privateers. The crimes and mail robberios o
the first quarter of our century push thei
way into the story. We begin to see the in
terlocking hostilities Of slave owners and fret
people. The public men of this country az
pear in the story, not as characters, but a
"reminiscences. and hence there are odd pic
lures of Gen. Washington, of Young Rober
L. Lee counting his wife at Arlington Heights
of John III. Clayton compelling the nulliter
to accept the compromise of protection to
American manufactures, and of the lobbie
which beset our state capitals at the dawn O
the railway period.