HATS AT NIGHT.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 14308, 20 March 1912, Page 9

HATS AT NIGHT.

Why do men wear hats when they go out in the evening? asks the Molbourno "Argus." The wearing of hats in the evening, it says, is a convention which has lost all its moaning; it has como to us frd'm other climates, and we have slavishly adopted it, though our own climate robs it of all semblance of rationality. The general doing away 'with', hats by night would simplify tho work of the police, for then they would be quickly able to distinguish truo men from knaves. As for the argument that tho hat is a covering whereby tho baldheaded may shelter his infirmity from the scoffs of an unfeeling world, it may bo replied that wo aro not as in tho days of tho.prophet; baldness has become: so nearly universal that it no longer excites the derision oven of the most unmannerly children; moreover, it is well known that many men attribute baldness to the excessive wearing of hats. No, the practice has no basis in pure reason; it is indefensible; but; like many other indefensible practices, it endures. Such is the cowardice of mankind; such is the fearful power of a'custom which has once got itself established. Thcso things are a parable.