She longed to make the world better,
and without any priggishness she set it an example of simplicity and
sobriety, of cheerful acquiescence in plainness and inconspicuousness.
One day--it was in the autumn--this lady had occasion to buy a new hat.
From a great number offered to her she selected a red one with a dull red
plume. It did not agree with the rest of her apparel; it did not fit her
apparent character. What impulse led to this selection she could not
explain. She was not tired of being good, but something in the jauntiness
of the hat and the color pleased her. If it were a temptation, she did
not intend to yield to it, but she thought she would take the hat home
and try it. Perhaps her nature felt the need of a little warmth. The hat
pleased her still more when she got it home and put it on and surveyed
herself in the mirror. Indeed, there was a new expression in her face
that corresponded to the hat. She put it off and looked at it. There was
something almost humanly winning and temptatious in it. In short, she
kept it, and when she wore it abroad she was not conscious of its
incongruity to herself or to her dress, but of the incongruity of the
rest of her apparel to the hat, which seemed to have a sort of
intelligence of its own, at least a power of changing and conforming
things to itself.
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