They fling on their easy-fitting black
clothes in a way that leaves them their whole time for the study
of public affairs and attention to the wants of their constituents,
and at the same time recalls their humble beginnings.
What strikes one, however, as most curious in the controversy
between the Short-Hairs and the Swallow-Tails is the illustration it
affords of the rigidity with which every class or grade in
civilization treats its own social conventions, whatever they may
be, as final, and as having some subtle but necessary connection
with morals. When the Indian squats round the tribal pot in his
breech-clout, and eats his dinner with his dirty paw, he is fully
satisfied that he is as well equipped, both as regards dress and
manners, not only as a man need be, but as a man ought to be. The
toilet, the chamber, and the dinner-table of a plain New England
farmer he treats as wasteful and ridiculous excess, and if good for
anything, good only for plunder. The farmer, on the other hand,
loathes the Indian and his ways, and thinks him a filthy beast, and
that he (the farmer) has reached the limits of the proper as regards
clothes and food and personal habits, and that the city man who puts
greater elaboration into his life is a fribble, who is to be pitied,
if not despised and distrusted.
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