The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-03-30
From the New York Sun.


 70 sa sa' s, 's 'tss s. '' rsss asss's ought ss's '" be submitted to the Grand Mas ter of the Wardrobe and Lord High Com- missioner of Clothes, our old friend Pro- lessor Beaunash of the Providence Jour nal:
 New York, March 14.-To the Editor of Sunday night-a dress suit, tuxedo, froclS coat or cutaway?
 SARTOR RESARTUS.
 Let us premseO that we are liberal op- portunists in these matters. whereas Pro- lessor Beaunish is an absolutist. He sticks to what he regards as the eternal proprieties. He would disinhert his own son for calling "evening clothes or
 dress clothes" or evening dress "a dress suit"; and dress suit case" is an
 expression which gives him physical as we'll as moral pain. He lives on the sin
 cere milk of clothes philosophy, and we applaud and revere his principles. But
 in a wicked and cynical town, in the red glare of Holsters and lobster palaces, where the sober weeds of night are called too often and too frivolously glad rags'' there must be some deflection from the narrow path of truth, some compromise with powers of darkness
 Now to business. What should man, a New York man. wear of a Sunday night? Here temporal considerations come in. If a man is bound to be healthy, wealthy and wise, he will wear pajamas or nghtshirt at the usual hour on Sum day night Before he seeks the seclusion that bed or folding bed grants he should
 wear if he chooses. evening clothes be- tween. say D. m. and the shank of the evening or morning. Brooklynites and commuters can put 'em on at p. m. There was a time, we believe, when some pious or conservative citizens would not don their week-night uniform on Sunday night This sacrifice to Puritanism Is no longer exacted. and the custom of wear ing evening clothes every night has grown enormously. At the same time, 1t is nothing in the United States to what 1t is in Great Britain. On steamer in the indian ocean or in his lonely bungalow in the rains, the Englishman of a certain class, or WHO WOulu pc lhou8ht to bC- long to it, shrouds him in solemn togs. In this country the custom has curious mocratic-republican notifications and variations .and adapts itself to 'the ge- nius of our institutions The so-called dinner coat the Tuxedo" If we may say so with the peace of Professor Beau nash. has spread like the plague. It has left the domestic interior. the billiard room, and the smoking room. and flaunts itself in all sorts of places where it does not seem to belong. It's a wretched little monkey jacket, a curtal pomp. If a man dresses" for evening, why doesn't he do it and not slip on a walters jacket?
 So the virtuous tell us; and at first blush there seems something ridiculous in this black abbreviation and abomlnation. Look at lot of men. tailless anthropoids, spra wing lugubriously on the sofas and easy chairs of some winter resort" or summer resort hotel. They seem to be- long to the realms of negro minstrelsy. Yet great is the dinner coat" and it will prevail The sack coat Is the American badge. the symbol of equality. the one democratic, constitutional, free and easy wear The dinner coat" is the
 sack applied. altered. opened. One rules the day. the other the night. So,