Herr Teufelsdrockh informs those who read his famous book, the _Tailor Sewer Over; or, the Philosophy of Clothes_, that Mr. Pellum announces, among other canons regulating human apparel, that it is permitted to mankind, under certain conditions, to wear white waistcoats. But it now appears that, under certain conditions also, straw-colored gloves are not only permissible, but imperative. When a Japanese ambassador appears, and the white flag with the orb of day in its centre is unfurled, straw-color, as to the hands, is the only wear. Therefore, when the reception was to take place in Washington the deeply initiated held hands of that mystic color. The only chagrin was that nobody seemed to know the significant fact nor to care for it; and one honorable gentleman asked with interest whether it would not be extremely orthodox to wear a straw-hat. But these levities were ill becoming the august occasion. The feast of the straw-colored gloves in honor of the Japanese ambassadors fell upon an evening when the poetic policeman thought of every belle who stepped from her carriage, "The bleak winds of March Made her tremble and shiver." But he thought it only; he did not say it. Yet the bleak wind of the cold night had little chance at the guests, for a pavilion was laid to the very curb-stone, and everybody stepped out into friendly shelter. Then up the steep stairs, just as the illustrious guests were passing from the cloak-room to the hall. As they entered it the crowd, swelling upward from the door below, made for the ladies' room, or for the little hole in a corner into which the gentlemen were to thrust their coats, in the vague hope that they might be recovered. Some of the Japs who at a later hour were buffeting the crowd and struggling towards the aperture must have been impressed, if they were philosophers, with the fact that a nation of so many happy contrivances as they fondly believe us to be has not yet learned how to take charge of overcoats at public feasts. It would not be very difficult to avoid the fierce crush at the cloak-room; but it is not avoided, and it is as good-humored as it is disagreeable and unnecessary.