Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1898-09-01
DECLINE OF THE DUsTER.
Tho Practical Disappearance ofa Garment
That Was Once Familiar.

That Was Once Familiar.
A traveller by rail cannot fail to
notice the decline of the duster. And
one does not need to be, as the man
said, centenarian to observe this.
In fact, only thirty or forty years ago
busters were commonly worn by rail
road travellers. They were co-existent
with the carpet sack and the alligator
mouthed valise, both now more COM
pletely passed away than the duster
itself, and almost as completely gone
as the hair-covered trunk.
The duster in its original form was
built of brown linen, which, when
starched, stood boldly out like gar
ment of thin and flexible, but not too
flexible, sheet metal. 1t was worn, of
course. to protect the wearer and his
garments from the dust. When the
linen duster fourished locomotives
burned wood, tracks were sand bal
lasted, and rails were tight, cars were
not vestibuled, or provided with dust
screens for the windows, and the time
required to cover q given distance was
far greater than now. duster was
far more needed then than now, and
it was likely to be part Of the equip
ment of the casual as we'll as of the
regular traveller Indeed, it may be
said that the casual traveller would
scarcely have thought that he had
made trip by rail unless he had pro-
vided himself with that indispensable
part of every travellers equipment.
Prim and stiff and sheet-irony in
effect as the freshly ironed linen
duster was when first put on, it pres
ented very different appearance when
it had been worn for time. At first,
sat down in on day such as was then
simply called sticky or muggy, but
which in these fashionable modern
days is called humid, the duster was
creased with many creases that seemed,
later, despite the weather, to be frozen
in. And these creases, in appearance
like accordion pleats struck by light
ming, shortened the garment some
what. They took it up, and made it
bigger around and more bunchy.
The next effect came with continued
wear, when the starch was all gone
out of it, and the duster became
stringy. And if before it had seemed
to shorten up and grow stout it now
seems to become lean and attenuated;
to take into itself many little rolling
longitudinal wrinkles~ to sort of
shrink in on itself sidewise, and to
draw over lengthwise, and by this
time it had probably come to hang un-
evenly, so that the front corners had
dip and were lower than the back of
the coat. In its first estate the linen
duster was, if not a garment of dig
nifty, one that had an effect of precise
ness, but in it's last was very far from
that. In fact, it is doubtful if a per-
son of even the most imaginative
temperament could coniure up any
thing more negligee in its general
effect than stringy linen duster.
But the linen duster was not the
only one. There were busters of
alpaca and of mohair and of other
materials, some of them black and
some gray; big, flowing, comfortable
busters, which. if not beautiful, had
at least the grace that all things made
of good materials possess. You could
almost tell man, without seeing his
face, by the duster that he wore =
New York Sun.