Autumn Leaves, page 59 by Various Authors
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nuine stove-pipe form, and a brim an inch wide, says, "This is the newest style, Sir." The gentleman walks home with the ugly thing on his head, but no one stares or laughs. 'Tis a new fashion, but all "take it easy." A year later, perhaps, the hatter shows him a thing with a brim a half an inch wider, but rolled up at the sides, and a crown of a much greater diameter at the top than where it joins the brim,--a specimen of the bell-crown. This is solemnly donned, and the wearer has the pleasure of knowing that the head-gear of all his friends is as hideous as his own. The inverted cone is worn with a sweet, Malvolio smile. And so "Deformed" has ruled the head of man for as many years as any of us can number, only ringing the changes, from one year to another, upon the three degrees of comparison of the word ugly.
But a change takes place; a light, graceful, low-crowned hat, with a brim wide enough for shelter or for shade, begins to appear as a fashion;--and how is it received? The clergyman thinks it would be very unclerical for him to wear it, though it may be as black, and is as modest, as the rest of his apparel. The young doctor timidly tries it on, and in his first walk meets the wealthy hypochondriac, his favorite patient, and the one who is trying to introduce him to practice, who seriously advises him, as a friend, not to wear that new-fangled thing,--if the poor hat had only been ugly, there would have been nothing bad in its new-fangled quality,--as all his respectable patients will leave him if he dresses so like a fool. The young lawyer gets one, because he heard an old lady speak of "those impudent-looking hats," and he is in hopes that impudence, which he understands is all-important in his profession, and which he is conscious of not possessing, may come with the hat. A lady goes out with her son, who is just old enough to have gained a coat, and is looking for his first hat. The mother has taste and judgment, and the youth has yet some unperverted affinity with graceful f