me--especially--well, both. Those strange garments had looked so
refreshingly picturesque, and I had conceived such an intense longing to
wear them! Was it a very contemptible ambition on my part? Is it sinful
to wish for any adornments other than wisdom and sobriety, a meek and
loving spirit, good works, and other things of the kind? Straight into
my brain flashed the words of a sentence I had recently read--that is to
say, just before my accident--in a biological work, and it comforted me
as much as if an angel with shining face and rainbow-colored wings had
paid me a visit in my dusky cell: "Unto Adam also, and his wife, did the
Lord God make coats of skin and clothed them. This has become, as every
one knows, a custom among the race of men, and shows at present no sign
of becoming obsolete. Moreover, that first correlation, namely,
milk-glands and a hairy covering, appears to have entered the very soul
of creatures of this class, and to have become psychical as well as
physical, for in that type, which is only _for a while_ inferior to
the angels, the fondness for this kind of outer covering is a strong,
ineradicable passion!" Most true and noble words, O biologist of the
fiery soul! It was a delight to remember them. A "strong and
ineradicable passion," not merely to clothe the body, but to clothe it
appropriately, that is to say, beautifully, and by so doing please God
and ourselves. This being so, must we go on for ever scraping our faces
with a sharp iron, until they are blue and spotty with manifold
scrapings; and cropping our hair short to give ourselves an artificial
resemblance to old dogs and monkeys--creatures lower than us in the
scale of being--and array our bodies, like mutes at a funeral, in
repulsive black--we, "Eutheria of the Eutheria, the noble of the noble?"
And all for what, since it pleases not heaven nor accords with our own
desires? For the sake of respectability, perhaps, whatever that may
mean. Oh, then, a million curses take it--respectability, I mean; may it
sink into the bottomless pit, and the smoke of its torment ascend for