The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-02-27
Laca weather Report. New Haven. Feb. 26.
Drls- o-as..m High water to-day. 7:26 a. m.
LOSERS AND THEIR POSES.
F1imsy Materials From Which Molds of
 Fashion are Made.

Flimsy Materials From Which Molds of
 Fashion are Made.
 It may be a little trick that evolution has, for evolution. like nature, has sly habit of practwical joking, but there is a tendency on the part of mankind to live up to the prevailing style of novel hero. And the novel hero, the man born of storytelling. finds his parallel in other branches of art Literary style copies him. Politics copies him. Business copies him, and business men seek to find, when selecting clerks, the clerks so dressed and so built that he resembles him. Dress copies him. Habits copy him. In all our actions, our rising up and lying down, our eat- ing, drinking, thinking, play, coming and going-our life as whole runs in the same mold. It is complex, but it is entire and uniform. Even individuaI- ty is a gregarious movement Virility becomes a trick that can be learned by all.
 In fiction, whether ti is historic, soci- ety or the work of literary ough-hous- CTS, the tall, 1.-the. broad-shouldered, IQtl-C1iCoLONA, til1ll-W clotCets AAi-ASo SA type has been in demand.
 Any young man can act the part. The barber can trim lir hair to give the right look to the upper portion of his head. A strengthening of the mouth and a protruding of the lower jaw give the appearance of firmness. A little practice and the thing becomes uncon- scious habit. From being laboriously studied assumption, it passes to the stage where it is natural All things that are natural with us are acquired by hard study. The rest of the make up is a tailor's trick. But you need only glance at the advertisements con cerning full and concave shoulders, gar ments that hang right, to know what the trick Is.
 The most typical novelty looking young man may be as commonplace as the average novel itself. But he is liv- ing up to the type. He is looking man inesss, acting manliness, even if he has none. It is the fashion.
 Novelists hunt. in packs. Men follow styles in droves. What the novelist pictures in words. the artist paints. It may be that the novelist and artist do not begin more quickly than the rest of society, but they arrive at their fixed types before the others know, and pos sibly before the novelist and artist req lize that a type is being or has been formed.
 The athletic girl, like her determinedly virile brother, was and is literary type, and she is more firmly fixed and better developed on paper than shs is in reality.
 Such movements can be good or bad truism And it all depends on wheth- CT there is any real mental develop lnent accompanying the outward nov ing picture pose. The virile muan, ii his mind grasps the realities of manli- ness and cherishes them in an advance over the languishing and bored man of former generation. If he does not, he is no better. If the athletic woman, the natufe-loving woman, feels that all youth, all life, spring from the earth and that air and light and sunshine are the wine of existence, she is an i'm provement over all previous women k from her of the vapors to the shy an6 poetic $ inper. If she does not, why care whether French heels, hydraulic pressed waists, towering hair, patches powder, rouge and crinolin come in ol stay out?
 We can fix without much difficulty the mental fashion of time. If a man when he has his picture taken, jauntil5 swings a little cane, strokes a tiny mus tache, and looks confidently and appro- priatingly at all, we know it is the age of foppery. If he leans moodily on g pillar, we know it is the fashion to be melancholy and sentimental. If he stands squarely, firmly and easily loosely dressed, rugged and aggressive we know he has caught the virile fash, ion of his age.
 The posse is as easy to change as the cut of the garment. How is the virility of the man affected by skin-tight trous. CTS. requiring shoe horn for entrance or the generous-seated trousers thar can be cut up into twenty pairs for lit. tie Tommy? What subtle connection k there between the Algernons, Sydneys Etheldreds (with some clinging, poetic family name) and the sentimental dropping old style; and the Jacks Bills Dicks, ,Harrys and the square-jawed Atlas-shouldered new style When WI pass from the toothpick, pointed toe: shoe to the broad shoe, do we let oui mind out of it's strait-jacket?- ?-NeN Eark Evening Post.