The Savannah morning news., 1900-07-10
TALES OF THE BRIGADE.
some of the Happenings That Hap
to the Shirt sleeves Corps.

The Shirt Sleeves Brigade. its member
ship. principles. the things that may be
said in rs favor and the things that are
being said in its dispraise. are subjects
of continual talk.
No subject. short of the very great
ones. has aroused more vigorous argu-
ment. On the streets, in the Offices and
clubs, wherever two or three idle ones are
gathered together. its merits and demer-
its are threshed out with all the vigor
and earpestness of the amateur disputant
and with a zeal and enthusiasm that are
worthy of a presidential contest at the
very least
A man preached the subject 10 a girl
he knew the other day. handling it in a
delicately impersonal fashion that he was
confident would please. Probably his treat
ment was not as delicate nor as imper-
sonal as he, in the blithe and egoustic
stupidity of the mere man." had thought
IT, At any rate, after ne had discoursed
for about five minutes on the theme. he
noticed that tense rightly was the most
prominent characteristic OF the occupant
of the other chair. Then he stopped
"Why-er-don't you think ii is all right
for a man to appear on the street without
his coat?" he queried mildly
The red lips came together with an
angry little snap. 1t IS question have
never considered" she said, with a GER
tainty of manner and expression that
showed she had. Il am quite sure that
no man of my acquaintance would be
guilty of such a vulgar solecism."
That settled the young man. And so
the fight goes on. On the one hand are
arrayed the advocates of comfort and
progress, while on the other are those
whom their opponents term the slaves of
custom and hide-bound conservatism. One
side can see in the suggested summer
garb nothing that is improper and every
thing that is desira bic, while the other
welded 10 its ido.s and Its ideals pro-
nounces it as hopeiessly bad form a
bathing suit in ballroom or a golfng
outfit a dinner.
Neither is the cause without its mar
tyrs. Last Sunday a well known Sdvan-
nah man determined to put his principles
TO the test. He arrayed himself in white
from head to foot, wearing a white hat
white duck shirt and trousers. and white
shoes, and he rounded off the costume
with white umbrella and then started
bravely down the street. He had a. mag
niicent physique, his clothes We're the
product of a master of his art, and it
would have seemed that only the exceed
ingly cynical and critical could have
found aught to object to in his costume.
Possibly the man thought so, too, but
if he did he was doomed to disappoint-
ment. In the gladness and pride of his
heart or, possibly, because he lacked that
reverence for the things that are that is
the local substitute for the beginning of
wisdom he wandered into that temple of
Savannah respecta bility. the Oglethorpe
Club. Nor was he content with making
his offense q minor one, but, absolutely
lost TO all sense of right and percep ton
OF decorum, stalked calmly into the par
lors, into the very holy of HOLES of the
place.
Mild-mannered old gentlemen all over
the room looked up from their papers with
d bewildered stare. Several of the wait
ers, who count their terms of service with
the club by decades, became rooted to the
spots upon which they CHANGED 10 stand
and had to be enticed away by their fell
lows, or else were struck with such a fit
OF trembling that they distributed the con-
tents of the tray they were carrying on
the polished floors The younger mem
bers of the club shook in their shoes
Never in ali its history had anything hap
pened that approached this. A man, a
member of the club one in whom the
sense of the eternal fitness of things
ed into the club in his shirt sleeves The
trump of the resurrection morn could have
produced a sensation only little more
pronounced
The next day the man was in receipt
of letter from the board of governors of
the club, in which he was reminded that,
while the board could exercise no juris-
diction over his peculiar taste in dress, it
could and would prescribe the costume Mt
ted for appearance in its rooms. 1t de
sired to say that shirt sleeves did not
come within its conception of prober at
tire and it besaught the man either. to
wear a coat when he honored the club
rooms by his presence or to honor them
not at all.
All of which, of course, only goes to
show that the whole thing is a ques ton
OF taste and opinion. in which each man
must be the arbiter of his own destiny If
he values comfort more than the reproba-
ton of the world in which he lives, or a
part of 1t, well and good; if he loves
peace from criticism more than ceolness.
well and good also. Meanwhile. however,
the brigade gains new recruits every day,