Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/777

 (Fig. 1) was made to show this method of sticking to the fashion.

The ear ornaments of the Botocudus are not essentially different from those used in the lips (see Fig. 2). The plugs are of the same materials, size, and appearance; they differ only in that they are worn in the openings made in the lobes of the ears instead of in the lower lip. The bands of the ears, when the plugs are not in place, dangle upon the shoulders when left to themselves (Fig. 3), but they are generally thrown over the top of the ear. This custom of looping up the ear lobes is shown in Fig. 4.

Many persons who have seen these pictures have thought such a fashion too inconvenient to last long. But the inconvenience of a fashion seems to have but little or nothing to do with either its origin or its perpetuity. Our own fashions are often complained of as tyrannical, unreasonable, unbecoming, inartistic, useless, whimsical, and everything else that is not downright wicked. But all people have fashions of one sort or another, and we can only congratulate ourselves that, however bad some of our fashions may be, they might have been worse than they are.

the reasons published by Count Paul von Hönsbröch, of Germany, for renouncing his allegiance to the order of the Jesuits, are the rigor and monotony of the discipline enforced by its rules. From the first day of his novitiate the young Jesuit, it might be said, is run into a mold from which he is ultimately to emerge a mere passive instrument of the mission work of the order. The mesmerized or hypnotized patient, according to the count, is not a more perfect tool in the hands of the manipulator than is the well trained Jesuit in those of the general of the order. He lives, moves, and has his being simply at the behest of his superior, and responds to the demands from those above him with a fidelity and an efficiency attainable under no other system. A similar confession is made by Count Campello, of Rome, in his statement of reasons for having ceased to serve as canon of St. Peter's. The daily monotonous exercises of the Basilica, repeated morning and evening without break from year to year, were paralyzing his mental and bodily powers and destroying all initiative. These facts point to a fatal influence of monotony which deserves to be studied; for under the increasing specialization of learning and occupation, life is tending daily to become more monotonous and more destitute of true inspiration.