When
the thermometer is in the eighties, anything heavy and formidable is
distasteful. The housekeeper knows we want few solid dishes, but salads
and cooling drinks. The publisher knows that we want our literature (or
what passes for that) in light array. In the winter we prefer the boards
and the rich heavy binding, however light the tale may be; but in the
summer, though the fiction be as grave and tragic as wandering love and
bankruptcy, we would have it come to us lightly clad--out of stays, as it
were.
It would hardly be worth while to refer to this taste in the apparel of
our fiction did it not have deep and esoteric suggestions, and could not
the novelists themselves get a hint from it. Is it realized how much
depends upon the clothes that are worn by the characters in the novels
--clothes put on not only to exhibit the inner life of the characters,
but to please the readers who are to associate with them? It is true that
there are novels that almost do away with the necessity of fashion
magazines and fashion plates in the family, so faithful are they in the
latest millinery details, and so fully do they satisfy the longing of all
of us to know what is chic for the moment.
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