“To give strength to that part of the coat, I presume.”

“And yet it is only a year or two since it was the fashion to have no flaps at all.  I do not remember ever to have seen a coat torn there, do you?  It is no use, uncle—­you might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion.  And old people feel this as well as young.  They have their fashions, and we have ours, and they are as much the votaries of their peculiar modes as we are of our.  The only difference is, that, as our states of mind change more rapidly, there is a corresponding and more rapid change in our fashions.  You change as well as we do—­but slower.”

“How could you talk to uncle Absalom and aunt Abigail as you did?” said Henry Grove to his sister, as they walked slowly home together.

“Didn’t I make out my point?  Didn’t I prove that they too were votaries of the fickle goddess?”

“I think you did, in a measure.”

“And in a good measure too.  So give up your point, as you promised, and confess yourself an advocate of fashion.”

“I don’t see clearly how I can do that, notwithstanding all that has passed to-night; for I do not rationally perceive the use of all these changes in dress.”

“I am not certain that I can enlighten you fully on the subject; but think that I may, perhaps in a degree, if you will allow my views their proper weight in your mind.”

“I will try to do so; but shall not promise to be convinced.”

“No matter.  Convinced or not convinced you will still be carried along by the current.  As to the primary cause of the change in fashion it strikes me that it is one of the visible effects of that process of change ever going on in the human mind.  The fashion of dress that prevails may not be the true exponent of the internal and invisible states, because they must necessarily be modified in various ways by the interests and false tastes of such individuals as promulgate them.  Still, this does not affect the primary cause.”

“Granting your position to be true, Mary, which I am not fully prepared to admit or deny—­why should we blindly follow these fashions?”

“We need not blindly.  For my part, I am sure that I do not blindly follow them.”

“You do when you adopt a fashion without thinking it becoming.”

“That I never do.”

“But, surely, you do not pretend to say that all fashions are becoming?”

“All that prevail to any extent, appear so, during the time of their prevalence, unless they involve an improper exposure of the person, or are injurious to health.”

“That is singular.”

“But is it not true.”

“Perhaps it is.  But how do you account for it?”

“On the principle that there are both external and internal causes at work, modifying the mind’s perceptions of the appropriate and beautiful.”

“Mostly external, I should think, such as a desire to be in the fashion, etc.”