new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new
wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls,
must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds
to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the
caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion;
for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise
we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably
cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous
plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful
clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our
life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury;
our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument,
or cortex; but our shirts are our liber, or true bark, which cannot
be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe
that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the
shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay
his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects
so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can,
like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without
anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as
three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really
to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five
dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two
dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat
for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half
cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so
poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not
be found wise men to do him reverence?
When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress