Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1891 — Hats Off ! [ARTICLE]

Hats Off !

One of the simplest instincts of good manners would seem to be that a man should uncover his head while eating his dinner with his family; yet it is pretty certuin that the first gentlemen of England two centurios ago habitually wore their hats during that ceremony, nor is it known just when or why tho practice was chauged. In l’epys’ famous Diary, which is the best manual of manners for its period, we read, under date of Soptomber 22,1664: “Home to beil, having got u strange cold in my head, by flinging off my hat at dinner, and sitting with the wind in my neck.” In Lord Clarendon's essay on the decay of respect paid to age he says that in his young days he never kept his hut on before those older than himself except at dinner. Lord Clurendon died in 1674. That the English members of Parliament sit with their hats on during the session is well known, and the same practice prevailed at the enrly town meetings in New England. The presence or absence of the hat is, therefore, simply a conventionality, and so it is with a thousand practices which ore held, so long ns they exist, to be the most unchangeable and matter-of-course affairs. [liurper's Bazar.