The Englishman's Kal.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, 3 December 1887, Page 7

The Englishman's Kal.

Ix the new instalment of his " Hunched Days in Europe," in the "Atlantic Monthly," Oliver Wendell Holmes says :—: — In walking the ftibluonable streets of London one can hardly fail to be struck with the well-dressed look of gentlemen of all ages. The special point in which the Londoner excels all other citizens I am conversant with is the hat. I belie\e in the English hat as the best thing of its ngly kind. As for the Englishman's feeling with refeience to it, a foreigner might be pardoned for thinking it was his fetitch, a North American Indian for looking at it as taking the place of his own medicine-bag. It is a common thing for the Englishman to say his piayers into it, as he sibs down in his pew. Can it be that this imparts a leligions character to the article? However this may be, the true Londoner's hat. is cared for as reverentially as a HighChurch altar. Far off its coming shines. I was always impressed by the fact that even, with us a well-bred gentleman in reduced circumstances never ' forgets to keep his beaver well brushed, and I remember > thati long ago I spoke of the hat as the ulthnum morkim of what we used to call gentility, the last thing to perish in the decay of a gentleman's outfit. His hat is as sacred to an Englishman as his beard to a Mussulman.