Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1911 — RELIGION IN MEN’S HATS [ARTICLE]

RELIGION IN MEN’S HATS

Fantastic and Strange Object Which Many Men Worship—Doctrine Is Absolute. The hat that wears la much more characteristic of his religious belief than the hat that a woman wears. I will tell you why. The jroman wears her clothes, not because they conform strictly to a religious dogma or doctrine, but because she thinks she looks pretty in them. Whereas a man wears his clothes because he thinks " they conform to an absolute doctrine of religion. We talk about the natives of the /South Sea islands. We talk about the natives of Alaska with their totems and their idols, the strange figures that they worship, and we look down upon them because they worship the totem. But how much more fantastic and strange object is that which many men worship—the shape of their hats ? and it is even true that a man that wears one form of hat feels ashamed of himself if he has to go out on the street with another form of hat on — he feels different, and the only way he has of arriving at salvation is that strange religion of hats is to commence to get used to the hat; to move in accordance to the hat he wears; in fact, to follow the religion of that hat. Let us say we have a man with a straw hat. Now a man that wears a straw hat has a little lighter tread as he walks along the ground. He has a lighter way of examining things. He is a more fanciful man. Now, if you put a man in a silk hat, you will find a man in a silk hat has a very dignified and solid way of conducting himself under . the apspices of that silk hat. If we had a man with a straw hat and a man with a silk hat and a train, and if the train were drawing out of a station, and those two men attempted to catch It, do yon know which man would catch that train? You do, don’t you? Because you know the religion of that silk hat wouldn’t allow that man to run. It would be ridiculous to run in a silk hat. But a straw hat allows little trivialities and one of those trivialities is running, prdviding that man wishes to, catch a train, because no running other than for a train is allowed by any hat whatever.