drawn from the way of dressing, inasmuch as a passing inclination,
economic conditions, etc., may exert no little influence by compelling
an individual to a specific choice in dress. Such influence is not
particularly deep. A person subject to a particular inclination may be
sufficiently self-exhibiting under given circumstances, and that he was
compelled by his situation to dress in one way rather than another is
equally self-evident. Has anybody seen an honest farm hand wearing a
worn-out evening coat? He may wear a most threadbare, out-worn
sheep-skin, but a dress-coat he certainly would not buy, even if he
could get it cheap, nor would he take it as a gift. He leaves such
clothes to others whose shabby elegance shows at a glance what they are.
Consider how characteristic are the clothes of discharged soldiers, of
hunters, of officials, etc. Who fails to recognize the dress of a real
clerical, of democrats, of conservative-aristocrats? Their dress is
everywhere as well defined as the clothing of Englishmen, Frenchmen,
Germans, and Americans, formed not by climatic conditions but by
national character in a specific and quite unalterable way. Conceit,
carelessness, cleanliness, greasiness, anxiety, indifference,
respectability, the desire to attract attention and to be original, all
these and innumerable similar and related qualities express themselves
nowhere so powerfully and indubitably as in the way people wear their
clothes. And not all the clothes together; many a time a single item of
dress betrays a character.
Section 20. (7) _Physiognomy and Related Subjects._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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