The forms assumed by the Proper Thing in various regions are of infinite variety, and sometimes even more startling than ludicrous. In certain of the South Sea Islands, for instance, it is the Proper Thing for children to kill their parents when verging on old age; and the parents are quite agreeable to the practice, which derives its power from religious belief, as the tyrant’s dictates often do in heathen countries. In China the Proper Thing has been a terrible autocrat. There, women’s feet have been reduced to the shape and size of a nutmeg, and mandarins’ nails lengthened to a proportionate enormity—all out of deference to the Proper Thing, which to them means being idle and known to be idle. There, awe of the imperial presence has made it indispensable to ‘nine times knock the noddle;’ and we know how a representative of our own country was justly applauded in England for refusing to perform that ceremony, or conform to the exigences of the Proper Thing as by law established in China. It stalks across the lone expanses of the North American prairies, inspiring men to let their hair grow to the ground and make pompous speeches; while it lays heavy weights on women’s shoulders and crops their locks, and in some places flattens children’s heads in their cradles. East and west, in the past and in the present, its legislation is always seen taking the most contradictory forms, but almost equally inconvenient in all. Thus in ancient Mexico it decreed that the nobility should go to court in their shabbiest dresses, because no one might dare to be smart in the presence of the Emperor; and in modern Europe it decrees that ladies shall impoverish themselves rather than not go to court in a blaze of splendour. In this instance, however, there is no question as to which decree is the most convenient.