Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1887 — Conquered with Napoleon. [ARTICLE]

Conquered with Napoleon.

Trousers came into use for general wear with the French revolution. The gentleman, the supporter of royalty and sound constitutional principles, wore breeches. The term “sans culottes” sufficiently explained what were not worn by the masses who forced constitutional reform into revolution. By an apparent contradiction of purposes and principle, says the Atlanta Constitution, the “sans culottes,” who denounced every one who wore breeches, finally went beyond their opponents and wore twice as much cloth around their legs; in a word, adopted the modern trousers and made them the badge of a party as well known as a class. Napoleon, who was too thin at one period of his life and too stout at another to look his best in small clothes, nevertheless wore them on state occasions after he had set up a throne and gone into the Emperor business. His army was the first that wore trousers, and trousers made progress in general adoption step by step with the march of the French army. The French trousers and neat gaiter were seen in Egypt, in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, in Poland, and in Russia, on the banks of the Tagus and those of the Vistula. People thought that the manner in which a great conquering nation clad its legs was the model, and when the trousers wearers marched over the wearers of pigtails and knee-breeches at Jean and Auerstadt a decision was given from which the world did not care to appeal. The world is usually easily convinced of the wisdom of the victor. England stood out the longest against trousers, but finally she yielded, and her army marched to Waterloo wearing the universal leg funnels. Our grandfathers generally fell in with the ways of the world, though Federalists here and there would not yield. There is a story of a clergyman who, greeted with the rough inquiry, “How are you priest?” responded: “How are you, democrat? How do you know I’m a priest?” “By your dress. How do you know I’m a democrat? "By your address.” Doubtless the clergyman wore knee-breeches, while the admirer of Jefferson and “dangerous French principles” clothed his legs wit’k trousers.

Pkof. Neumayer of Hamburg urges the necessity of antarctic explorations, laying special stress on its importance for geology and paleontology. He anticipates that it will show that the south pole was a center of dispersion of animals and plants of the southern hemisphere, as the north pole is supposed to have been for the northern.