Part 4 (1/2)
How doth the hat with colors dare the eye!
Arrest--attract--allure--affront--appall!
Vivid and varied as are paroquets; Dove-dull; one ma.s.s of white; all solid red; Black with the blackness of a mourning world-- Compounded type of ”Chaos and Old Night”!
How doth the hat expand: wax wide, and swell!
Such is its size that none can predicate Or hair, or head, or shoulders of the frame Below thIs bulk, this beauty-burying bulk; Trespa.s.sing rude on all who walk beside, Brutally blinding all who sit behind.
How doth the hat's mere ma.s.s more monstrous grow Into a riot of repugnant shapes!
Shapes ignominious, extreme, bizarre, Bulbous, distorted, unsymmetrical-- Of no relation to the human head-- To beauty, comfort, dignity or grace.
Shape of a dishpan! Of a pail! A tub!
Of an inverted wastebasket wherein The head finds lodgment most appropriate!
Shape of a wide-spread wilted griddlecake!
Shape of the body of an octopus Set sideways on a fireman's misplaced brim!
How doth the hat show callous cruelty In decoration costing countless deaths; Carrying corpses for its ornaments; Wreath of dead humming-birds, dismembered gulls, The mother heron's breastknot, stiffened wings; Torn fragments of a world of wasted life.
How doth the hat effect the minds of men?
Patient bill-payers, chivalrously dumb!
What does it indicate of woman's growth; Her sense of beauty, her intelligence, Her thought for others measured with herself, Her place and grade in human life to-day?
INTRODUCING THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL
”O, no--Please don't--I'd rather not meet them!”
I'm sorry but you have to meet them, constantly.
”But I don't have to know them, surely!”
You will find it safer and easier if you do.
”But they are not proper persons to meet--I've heard awful things about them.”
Those stories come from people who never really knew them. They have been much maligned I a.s.sure you. Let me tell you a little about them before they come up.
The World yonder is really an excellent fellow, but sulky and erratic because he's not well used. Think of a beautiful, fruitful, home garden used for nothing but to play ball and fight in--and then blamed for its condition. That's the way he feels.
Then there's the Flesh. Never was a good fellow more abused! He's been brought up wrong, from babyhood--but he's all right inside.
As to the Devil--we really ought to be ashamed of treating him so. He'd have died centuries ago, but we will keep him going--and then blame him because his behavior's out of date!
Here they come. Allow me to present:
The World--Just Us; We and our Workshop.