The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-07-23
HATs AND BooTs.

All who have ever thought upon the
 subject will commend the effort to
 abolish boots and shoes. The mischief they work is unQuestionable. Eyeryboy knows that the habit of using goloshes is injuTious-no human being, perhaps,
 was ever 50 mad as to gear india-rub-
 Der boots as a practice Instinct warns
 us. But leather also obstruets the per
 spiration. The case of hats. that is of head coverings, is not so certain. For ' tie "chimney-pot. 1" indeed. nothing can
 besaid, but has a civilized people ever
 gone bareheaded? Schoolboys may l triumphantly recall the remark of
 Herodotus. after visiting the scene of a battle between Persians and Egyptians.
 The bones of the killed lay where they
 fell, and he observed that the skulls of the latter showed vastly greater thick
 ness. owing, as Herodotus concluded.
 to the fact that they never covered the
 head. Persians. on the other hand, al-
 ways covered it, and he found their
 skulls remarkably thin. But Egyptians
 left unburied must have belonged to the
 lowest class; officers and gentlemen
 wore wigs, and thick ones too. How
 ever the Egyptians old old, like the
 Chinese to-day, were a standing ex-
 ception to all rules. We think of no other race claiming civilization which did not protect the head. The secretary
 of the physical eulturists committed to
 a statement that the hat is a survival
 of the helment. There was no one to Icontradict him. apparently, or no one
 cared to do so, But it would be less in-
 exact to say that the walking stick is a
 survival of the spear, for old illustra-
 lions suggest that our ancestors did
 actually plant their spears on the ground at every step. Greeks and Ro-
 mans had more varieties of hat than we
 have now. It is rather curious that
 those most favored were the modern
 ''billycock" or 'bowler.". It is recorded as a notable peculiarity of FIadrian that
 he always went bare-headed the great
 casaubon was so struck by it that he
 wrote in his history. ''Who nowadays
 would dare expose his uncovered head
 to the solar beams and the all-scoreh- ling whitening frost?'' De Quincey
 made 1t boast that he had done as
 much when travelling in Wales. Rous-
 seau used his hat only as a receptacle
 for specimens when botanizing, and he
 declared that the hotter the sun the
 more 1t cooled his brain, Christopher
 North, Is another instance. But these
 were all notorious eccentrics; the white
 race or even the yellow, which does not
 protect the head has still to be identi-
 fled. Travellers who saw Japan before I 1t was Europeanized gave droll ac-
 count of the fashionable hat there. It
 was disk of lacquer, six inches across,
 perfectly flat, held on by six black strings two crossed under the chin,
 two under the nose, and two at the
 back. We may contrast this comic ar
 arrangement with the yard-wide hat of the Chinaman, the fools cap of the
 Korean, the graceful head -handker- | chies of the Malay. But the point is
 that no Asiastic people goes barehead- led It is only in Africa that such can
 be found A custom almost universal is probably justified by the experience
 of ages.
 But it is proposed that women also should cease to cover their heads, and
 to them this argument does not apply. l If the male sex always wears a hat of some kind, the female generally is in. different This is the only country in
 Europe where women of the working class do not habtualIy take their walks lbareheaded; and even here, if the place be private, they willtwork in the sun or wind uncovered. We may see ladies gardening without defence. Girls un- mindful of their complexion need con stant watching or they would ignore
 both hat and sunshade. It seems in deed, that feminine headgear is an or nanent rather than a protection. Few among the endless variety of caps worn l by peasant women abroad are practi- lcally useful, Those most admired do not profess to be, as the fashion of Lor- raine, which is simply broad bow, or 1 that of Aries, a thin cap of muslin girt with a black ribband. The Spanish
 Mantilla, and the Genoese Pezzotto still more charming, wore only wells, mostly ace-unfortunately we must speak of both in the past tense. They, f in fact, represent very general Idea of woman's headdress anything that
 could be snatched up and thrown over
 the head. They are quite aware that a pretty face looks best in such muffiing, and the lines of a plain one are soften- ed; but compare there make-shift con- trivances with the elaborate apparatus of the masculine hat. Roman anti quaries have traced the famous head dress of the Contadine to the Theris-
 trurn of antiquity which was just d cloth tossed over the hair; all the stag es of the transformation can be follow- ed in pictures and bas reliefs. That was the Greek fashion also, but it must be admitted that some of the la dies represented in Tanagra figures