Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1882 — About New Clothes. [ARTICLE]

About New Clothes.

There is something almost regenerating about new clothes. They possess a moral influence which even the missionary who carries them to the heathen has not overlooked, however pursuaded he may be that we overdo the matter. What man in his new spring suit ever refused his wife a favor V When he had on his old things, and felt down at the mouth’ and shabby enough, he could doubtless do it without a qualm; but let him once get inside of his new breeches, and all the complaisance in his nature comes to the surface. Even Pat feels himself hedged in his Sunday clothes, and limited as to drinks, and if he is going to give Biddy a black eye, he will do it m his old duds. And Biddy herself, though she may be sour enough about her work in her ‘tattered calico, and ready at bandying billingsgate, no sooner dons her smart new delaine than a ladylike behavior seems to be endued therewith. We love consistency, and there is something inharmonious to our minds between new clothes and bad manners, and we would fain remodel our speech and actions to correspond with our attire. Not that old clothes necessitate incivility. We will find many a gentleman and woman inside them. But when the rude and untutored body puts on her best, a vague, unformulated idea possesses her that the old ways are not in unison with the new things, and Mrs. Grundy will perceive at a glance that she is only a cook unless she simulates the bearing of the mistress as well as the cut and fashion of her garments. But even among the very elect, whose manners need no reformation, whose mind and temper are supposed to be above suspicion, new clothes are capable of arousing some latent enthusiasm. The excitement of selecting and preparing new ones never grows stale or unprofitable, since every season brings into the market fabrics and fashions so quaint and picturesque that one does not feel as if she were indulging in the commonplace recreation of clothing herself and fostering vanity, but as though she were cultivating her cesthetic taste, enlarging the borders of thought and appreciation, encouraging the arts and commerce, and absolutely doing missionary work in her own way in behalf of herself and her neighbors; for is the eye not an avenue to the soul ? In the meantime we will always meet those who have the audacity to find fault with new clothes, to whom new boots are an invention of the inquisition only second to the thumb screws, who never feel at homo in the spring suit until its freshness has departed, to whom tho ulster is a straight jacket, the new bonnet a species of martyrdom, who never l«come resigned to the discipline of new clothes.—lndianapolis Herald.

The first circus in the United States started out of Putnam county, N. Y., in 1828. It had eight or ten performers, as many horses, neither tent nor seats, and advertised only by marching through the village invested, with a man ahead calling out the place of exhibition. The programme included feats of strength, leaping, etc., and riding without saddle, and the ring was pitched in yards wherever convenient. After a time an elephant was added, and from this grew the menagerie addition. In 1832 the first tent was used in New York city. \

Nearly 1,000,000 bodies are interred in Greenwood and Calvary cemeteries, near Brooklyn.