LITERARY LEGGINGS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2133, 4 November 1875, Page 2

LITERARY LEGGINGS.

We believe, in spite of Shakespeare, that there is something -in a name, and sometimes too, a A rose might^eli^ai, sweet if- you called it an onion, but few ladies would care to wear a bunch of onions at a 1»U, ,no matter how rose-like they might be in nature, It would be interesting wiere some competent authority-to write jjja essay on the use and abuse of names, for they are capableof being :abused??Srad used as *yell as anything else. We could hardly believe in Cleopatra and those "pleasant ''i-timefgawhen, according %to Lord Byron, Worlds were staked for ladies' eyas, if Anthony (not the host of the Bowen) had been called Slain John Hodge, aid his lady lore Miss Mary Ann Perkins. The whole adventure would have had too' much the air of the: grocer's young man taking his walks abroad with the artless maid with whom he >'kept cdmpinif^ on the occasion of it^beihg her "SurilP day out" to be v^rrpiaJatable t6 the r romantic. People in England did not care half so much for Deerfoot the runner when they found ont^is real name was Bennett. Like the seasoningin the pies of Mr WellerY friend, the pieman, its the name "as does it," but unfortunately all people in their endeavors to find, a name sufficiently high* sounding or attractive are not always particularly happy in their- selectitb Little things please little minds may fc» said of us when we confess that we sometimes find interest in noticing the names by which tradesmen ticket their goods in shop windows. It may be true that our mind is little; it is that it is amused by these trivial names. Now we can stand a good deal in the war of names applied to articles vendible by drapers and others, though they range from the sublime to the ridiculous, going through all the stages from ■the; incdnfprehensible to the inapplicable. Thus we can put up with shirts called!' Eureka," although several presumed inventions Have made the word a thing of the past in a double sense. We can allow braces to Y& called " ne plus ultra" though they differ not appreciably from any; other traces; but we must confess that when?w« saw, as we saw to-day, a pair of trowsers ticketed "Triumviri," we thought that was carrying the joke too far. Why on earth, or how on earth can trowsers be appropriately named " Three men ? " Is it because they are large enough to be worn by three men at once, and thus recommended to the passer-by to show that he will get enough for his money? Or are they strong enough to outlast thrs pairs of ordinary trowsers, and so pointed out on the score of economy ? Did any one of the famous Triumviri wear garments of similar texture or cut—Julius Casar, for instance when he came to conquer Britain—and are the costumiers Messrs Nathan and Co. and the picture books of our childhood wrong in representing those heroes to us as clad in tight flesh-colored garments, or no garments (on the legs) at all? We shall be curious to see who buys these " Triumviri" trowsers, and intend, when their place in the shop window knows them no more, to keep a close look out in the hopes of seeing them in the course of our day's toil, ft will.-be interesting to notice how they are worn, whether their wearer is conscious of having threemen's clothes on his legs, whether it requires three men to wear them, and if so, whether these three men always agree, whether they really are large enough Tq§ Jhree men, whether they are so very un» like 'ordinary trousers after all as to require to be called by a separate name. When we have ascertained these facts .we will communicate the same, we don't like ourselves to go and enquire about the price, size, &c, of these literary leggings, but shall be much obliged to anyone who will do so and inform us. This flight of fancy on the part of the ambitious proprietor of these garments has/however the merit of originality, which is more than can be said of him or they who drew up the advertisement recommending Ellerslie Gardens to the public "as the place to spend a happy day." We do not wish to detract from the attractions of the place when we say that we fancy we have seen that same sentence placarded in every conceivable shape, size, and color of letter, on every available space in London, but then-the announcement was coupled with the name of Kosherville. We do not • mean to imply that the Ellerslie people have copied from those at Eosherville, but simply to draw attention to the fact that advertisements like history repeat themselves. The menagerie of these gardens (rather a good word by-the-bye for monj keys) "is worthy of inspection and the flower beds emit a million perfumes." This last is lucky as the monkeys are not nice. '*'■