Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/87

 A RHAPSODY ON OLD CLOTHES.

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��A B HAP SOD Y ON OLD CLOTHES.

��AY LUCIA MOSES.

��In these days of aesthetic raving over everything old it surprises me that old clothes receive so little attention. I do not mean worn out garments, fit only for the second-hand clothing shop, the rag- bag or the beggar at your door, but the partially disused adornments and habits that you wear on rainy days, when you know that no callers can venture forth, or that you pack in your cedar chest as being capable of further use by some fu- ture " making over." These superannu- ated servitors of a deposed queen of fash- ion are irresistibly fascinating to me by reason of their garrulity.

I am by nature a quiet body, and by stress of worldly circumstances an un- traveled one, but I have my failings as well as the best, and indulge them when I can. My especial weakness is a par- donable fondness for that sort of gossip known as reminiscences, and happily for me I learned long ago that by bringing my imagination into active play I could gratify my small whim without mental labor or pecuniary outlay.

There is a cedar-lined closet and chest I know of, the contents of which have enabled me to travel from the Golden Gate to " far Cathay," and revel in op- era, balls, college life, and '■ love's young dream." I have crossed the Atlantic by simply sitting quietly before an old rough serge dress. It is rugged and tired- looking, for it has made four sea voy- ages. As I open the door of the closet where it hangs, a strong, fresh, salt air seems to blow in my face; I hear the wash of the waves ; I feel the breeze on my cheek. Shining sand from the bay of Naples shakes from the ruffles fringed by long tramps over Scotch hills. A dark stain on the front is a rivulet of beer spilled by a clumsy waiter in a Ger- man concert garden. By the trailing, dejected braid hangs a tale of a dark,

��foggy night on her Britannic Majesty's Channel steamer; a surging sea, a dizzy head, an impertinent nail, and " 'Ere we are at Dover, mem, at last."

In the dimmest corner of this same closet hangs a battered, faded dressing- gown. The elbows and quilted scarlet silk cuffs of this once luxurious, gay gar- ment are sadly dilapidated, as if the wearerJiad spent his college days lean- ing out his window on folded arms. In one of the deep pockets is a smoking-cap embroidered in a fanciful pattern with tarnished gold braid. In another there is a dainty, scented billet-doux, a bit of blue ribbon, a meerschaum case, a son- net in halting Latin, and a pair of small primrose-colored gloves. The hands that wore the gloves and wrought the cap to cover a lover's brown curls are folded in that sleep that knows no wak- ing, and the college boy, who, years ago, held the little gloves to his lips, sits by a lonely fireside in a far-off land.

But my chief delight is in a cedar chest. There I hear again and again a love story that will never grow uninter- esting. ' Tis simply a pearl-gray velvet hat with sweeping plume and pale blush roses that babbles to me so deliciously. The bud of a girl who wore this saucy hat is now a blooming matron, but how beautiful she looked as she came down the stairs with it on twenty years ago. The young man impatiently awaiting her said involuntarily, " Fresh-blown roses washed with dew." Indeed, she must have been a vision of rare loveli- ness — the pure young face, the soft brown hair, the dreaming eyes. " So sweet, so daintily sweet and dear," he thought. I fear neither of them heard the opera that evening. They heard in- stead love's beguiling overture and the music of each other's unspoken words. Poor old hat ! You were tossed care-

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