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Nothing can be simpler or less pretentious, or more democratic.
Nobody can add anything to it or take anything away from it. Many
attempts to modify it have been made during the last thirty years by
leaders of fashion, and they have all failed, because it meets one
of the great wants of human nature. It is only within the last
fifteen years that it has obtained a firm foothold in American
cities. People looked on it with suspicion, as a sign of some inward
and spiritual naughtiness, and regarded the frock-coat with its full
skirts as the only garment in which a serious-minded man, with a
proper sense of his origin and destiny, and correct feelings about
popular government, could make his appearance in a lady's parlor.
Why, nobody could tell, for there was a time, not very far back,
when the frock-coat was itself an innovation. Of late--that is,
within, perhaps, twenty years--the Swallow-Tails of the world have
exchanged the black or colored for a white cravat, and justify
themselves by saying that it not only looks cleaner, but is cleaner
of necessity than a silk one, and that you cannot look too clean or
fresh about your throat when you present yourself in a lady's house
on a festive occasion.
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