If this lady
that autumn day had bought a plain bonnet she would have continued on in
her humble, sensible way of living. Clearly it was the hat that made the
woman, and not the woman the hat. She had no preconception of it; it
simply happened to her, like any accident--as if she had fallen and
sprained her ankle. Some people may say that she had in her a concealed
propensity for frivolity; but the hat cannot escape the moral
responsibility of calling it out if it really existed. The power of
things to change and create character is well attested. Men live up to or
live down to their clothes, which have a great moral influence on manner,
and even on conduct. There was a man run down almost to vagabondage,
owing to his increasingly shabby clothing, and he was only saved from
becoming a moral and physical wreck by a remnant of good-breeding in him
that kept his worn boots well polished. In time his boots brought up the
rest of his apparel and set him on his feet again. Then there is the
well-known example of the honest clerk on a small salary who was ruined
by the gift of a repeating watch--an expensive timepiece that required at
least ten thousand a year to sustain it: he is now in Canada.
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