The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-10-27
DRESS AND MANNERS.
The Travelling Salesman as a CivnIzer-
PrOsiigiOus Assurance-CO Country Folks.

The Travelling Salesman a CivnIzer-
PrOdigiO Assurance-C0 Country Folks.
brooklyn Esgle.l
The most striking feature of the inn
mense crowd which came to town To
view the Grant funeral, seems to have
escaped the general notice The people
had come from all over the country,
and yet they displayed little or no evil
dences of provincialism. Among the
half million or million of visitors,
nearly all were so well dressed and
quietly hammered that they looked as
though they had come from neighbor-
ing cities rather than from villages and
the back woods. An ingenious explana-
ton is that it is entirely due to the
travelling salesman. He is said to be
the great civilizer of America, and is
responsible to large degree for the i'm
provement in the appearance of the
people who are remote from the great
cities. This is not my own opinion ex-
actly, but it is one that l have often
heard expressed.
The manners of the drummers have
met have not always been IOvable and
worthy of imitation They are an
agreeable lot of men, and when one
meets them out of New York they seem
much more important than when they
are encountered here. The most sur
prising thing about the drummers to be
met on the road, particularly in
the extreme west and south,
is the fastidious and elegant
manner in which they dress. Until a
year or so ago had always supposed
that commercial travellers, when busily
engaged in going from town to town
and fairly living on the railroad trains,
wore rough travelling suits, blouses or
some sort of serviceable but not expen-
sise attire. This was very far from the
true condition of things. | found that
they Travelled in palace cars constantly,
and that nearly all of them dressed with
an amount of pretension and elegance
that would do justice to a broker in the
stock exchange. Patent leather boots.
immaculate white ties, perfect fitting
clothes and gloves and neat umbrellas
were found among them everywhere in
a word, the best dressed men to lie
found west of Philadelphia are un-
e.uestionably the travelling statesmen
erhaps our country cousins have
copied them in the way of attire. If
so they had good models. When it
comes to manners it is an entirely diff
ferent thing. The assurance of the traV-
cling man is prOdigious; nothing ever
staggers him, and he does the most ex-
traordinary things with calmness and
complacency that set other travellers
aghast. He invariably acts as if he
owned the railroad when he travelled,
and, as he is bright, tally and anus
ing, he is invariably on good terms with
the porter AMI the sleeping-ear con-
ductor. When three or four New York
travelling men meet in q sleeper the
other travellers amount to very little;
somehow the drummers manage to get
the best of everything. Bottles of iced
beer are brought out of the refrigerators
for them, while the other passengers
must DO content with condensed milk
and queer coffee, and they enjoy luxu-
ries that the millionaire traveller, despite
the most liberal tips, can never hope to
gain.
Their influence in the matter of dress
is unusually potent when they happen
to be travelling for clothing house.
The great New York and Philadelphia
clothing houses send out small armies
of clipper young men, who soour the
country thoroughly and establish
branch stores for the sale OF their ready
made clothes from one end Of the coun-
try TO the other. They have taught
the farmers and their boys to wear
business suits of light material and
light color in the summer, and have
taught them much in the way of what
is seasonable in attire. There was
time when the ambition of
every farmers heart and the desire of
every hired man was to possess q stove
pipe hat, long black broadcloth coat
aud pair of heavy doeskin trousers.
Thus equipped they wandered about
the streets of New \ Ork on their visits,
almost melting under the rays of the
sun.
Less than ten years ago, at this sea
son OF the year, the streets were alive
with just such Rbsurdly dressed yisi-
tors, and an occasion like that of the fun
eral of Gen Grant brought countrymen
20 town who wore grotesquely and un-
comfortably clad and who advertised
the fact that they were provincial in
every angle of their curious clothes
All that is changed now. The visitors
to New York from the country can
scarcely be distinguished from the aver
age run OF New Workers themselves,
except, perhaps, that the countrymen
have ruddier and healthier faces.