But when the cannibals, who had piously eaten their
parents, were asked instead to adopt the Greek custom of burning the bodies
they were horrified at the suggestion. They would cease to eat them; but
burn them? No. I can imagine Mrs. Brown's savages agreeing to take the
rings out of their noses, but refusing blankly to put them in their ears.
I have no doubt that the long-haired Cavaliers used to regard the short
hair of the Puritans as the "limit" in bad taste, but the man who today
dares to walk down the Strand with hair streaming down his back is looked
at as a curiosity and a crank, and we all join in that delightful addition
to the Litany which Moody invented: "From long-haired men and short-haired
women, Good Lord, deliver us." But who shall say that our children will not
reverse the prayer?
Even in my own brief span I have seen men's faces pass through every
hirsute change under the Protean influence of "good taste." I remember
when, to be really a student of good form, a man wore long side-whiskers of
the Dundreary type.
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