Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/538

 526 SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. the beaver covers it ; it is lined with the finest leather ; it glistens in the sun with a resplendent gloss ; it is no uglier in form than the stove-pipe of to-day ; it has all the properties of a good covering for the head. The original proprietor wore it with pride, and cherished it with care in adust-tight bandbox, in which it has reposed unharmed for fifty years. What is the matter with this. superior hat, that a man capable of marching up to the cannon's mouth shrinks with dismay from wearing it a mile on a fine afternoon in the street of his native city ? The hat is simply out of fashion ; nothing more. The present owner knows that, if he were to wear it, his friends would take him for a madman, his creditors would fear for his solvency, and the boys would set him down as a quack doctor. So rooted, so unconquerable in this tyranny, which many of us deride, and all of us obey ! I said it is the oldest of our tyrants. In Egyptian tombs, which were ancient when Antony wooed Cleopatra, there have been found many evidences that Egyptian ladies were as assiduous devotees of fashion as the fondest inspector of fashion-plates ■ can now be. In the British Museum you may inspect the implements of Egyptian fashion conveniently displayed. There are neat little bottles made to hold the coloring matter used by the ladies of Egypt for painting their cheeks and eyebrows. Some of these vessels have four or five cells or compart- ments, each of which contained liquid of a different shade for different portions of the face. These were applied with a kind of long pin or bodkin, several of which have been brought to this country. Professor W. H. Flower, a distinguished member of the Royal Society of London, has recently published a' a little book called " Fashion in Deformity," in which he mentions several ways in which ladies torment, as well as deform themselves, in obedience to the tyranny of