Hats Off.

Hastings Standard, Issue 438, 29 September 1897, Page 4

Hats Off.

A social revolution has occurred at San Francisco, and the interest attached to it will extend through many lands. The excitement, we are told, was manifest early in the afternoon in business circles, and for the time being mercantile affairs were forgotton and all the attention was centred on the momentous question of the hour—- " Will she obey ? " Bets were freely offered and taken. At the telephone office it is reported " the hello " girls were in despair, and as the afternoon waned, mechanically swung on the phonograph attachment, "Line busy, call again," to every call. A lurid hue overspread the lower portion of the town caused by the heated remarks of disappointed would-be purchasers of tickets. Before seven o'clock all the theatres presented the appearance of a Patti night. The occasion of all this thrilling excitement was the passing of a city ordinance, imposing arrest and fine on any lady wearing a hat with its plumes obscuring a vision of the stage from those who sat behind her. The denouement as one gazed on the crowded stalls is thus magnificently set forth in the following words of American reportorial gallantry : " Never was a victory more complete —for women. Never has she looked so charming. Never has she achieved a greater ascendancy over man than when the other night, with a flutter of fair hands, a flash of jewelled hat pins, she disengaged the forest of plumes, and revealed in all its beauty the gleaming mass of fair hair that adorned her pretty head." There was not a plumed hat to be seen in all the theatres ; and now the ladies are moving to enforce an anti clove between-the-act ordinance to prevent the necessity for their escorts going out to see a man about a dog.