THE BROWN HAT. ‘My son,’ said the wisest of modern men—whose name, of course, it were malicious to mention, and foolish also, the object being to promulgate charity, not to excite rancour—‘My son, if you would go through life easily, I can give you no better rule of conduct than this: _Never wear a brown hat in Friesland_.’ Now, though this piece of counsel may sound as hieroglyphical and mysterious as the well known precept by _Mr. Malaprop_ administered to his offspring, when the latter was about to quit home, ‘Evil communication is worth two in the bush,’ it is nevertheless susceptible of the clearest and most explicit interpretation. Though the fruits of particular and personal experience, it may be applied to every man who wears a hat under the sun, the moon, the seven stars, or the Seven Dials! let alone the Seven United Provinces! The Brown Hat whence this saying sprung, was merely a hat of common quality and uncommon comfort; soft to the head, not stiff; a screen for eyes from the sun; a thing taking no place among the traveller’s luggage—claiming no package of its own, and thus offering no wrangling-stock to those most tiresome of Jacks among all Jacks-in-office—to wit, Custom-house officers. It was a hat which the _Hatto_ of hats must have accredited as the very perfection of a quiet, middle-aged traveller’s _vade mecum_; something dull-looking, it is true, for those whose thoughts are ‘wide-awake;’ something vulgar, for any one troubled by aristocratic fancies as to his covering, and who loves not to be confounded with his butterman; but withal a hat to be defended by every man of sense, to be clung to by every creature capable of headaches; a hat one could be bumped about in during a day of sixteen hours, in carriage, cart, or third-class railway vehicle; a hat one could lie in bed in for nightcap, or sit upon for cushion; a kindly, comforting, unobtrusive hat—brown, because it was of the felt’s natural colour, pliant as a piece of silk, submissive to wind, impervious to rain. What can we say more? A castor, as the Pilgrim’s _Pollux_ put it, ‘fit to be buried in.’ Yet such was the hat, and none other, which—save your nerves be of granite, your cheeks of brass, and your patience the patience of a beaver—you are hereby solemnly warned not to wear in Friesland. In London, when you please and where you please, but not in Meppel, and not in Zwolle, and not in Sneek, and, most of all, not in the market-place at Leenwarden. As wisely might you have tried to walk down a village-street, in Lancashire, on Lifting-Monday (thirty years ago), thinking to escape from the obliging maids and jolly wives, who lurked behind their doors, bent on tossing every passing male in a kitchen chair, as have hoped for ten seconds of peace,—supposing that in Friesland (two autumns since) you took your walks abroad wearing a Brown Hat!