With evening dress he wore a tan overcoat so short
that his black coat-tails hung visible, five inches below the over-
coat; but after a season or two he lengthened his overcoat till it
touched his heels, and he passed out of his tight trousers into
trousers like great bags. Then, presently, he was seen no more,
though the word that had been coined for him remained in the
vocabularies of the impertinent.
It was a hairier day than this. Beards were to the wearers' fancy,
and things as strange as the Kaiserliche boar-tusk moustache were
commonplace. "Side-burns" found nourishment upon childlike profiles;
great Dundreary whiskers blew like tippets over young shoulders;
moustaches were trained as lambrequins over forgotten mouths; and it
was possible for a Senator of the United States to wear a mist of
white whisker upon his throat only, not a newspaper in the land
finding the ornament distinguished enough to warrant a lampoon.
Surely no more is needed to prove that so short a time ago we were
living in another age!
At the beginning of the Ambersons' great period most of the houses of
the Midland town were of a pleasant architecture.
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