In conclusion it may be worth while to record certain established rules, the disregard of which may have untoward consequences. Black laces do not harmonize well with brown boots, nor is it _de rigueur_ to wear them with a frock-coat, or when in evening or court dress. [Illustration: THE SEX QUESTION (A study in Bond Street)] The information here imparted must be accepted with certain reserves, and the same remark holds good of _Punch's_ picture of Church Parade in 1906, where hatless "nuts" smoking pipes, wearing Panama hats, knickerbockers and even dressing-gowns, are shown mingling with more correctly attired pedestrians. But, allowing for exaggeration, the picture reflects a real tendency--towards greater comfort and less convention in dress. The "nut" depicted in 1907 wears a coat with a pronounced waist, and highly coloured hose, but in 1910 _Punch_ descants lyrically on the announcement, made by the _Daily Express_, that "the reign of the passionate sock is over," though a man might "still let himself go in handkerchiefs." The poet ironically bewails the fiat which dooms our socks henceforth to silence:-- There is a power, my friends, That disciplines our loud-hued nether ends. Still, he consoles himself with the reflection that he still can wear his heart "up his sleeve," thus recalling the new definition of a gentleman given some years earlier in suburban circles as one who wore his handkerchief up his cuff. [Illustration: HOST: "How do you like the course?" VISITOR: "Well, I don't wish to appear ungrateful, but I should like to lie down!"] [Sidenote: _Passionate Socks and Knickerbockers_] Owing to the increasing skimpiness of skirts and the cult of slimness, the approximation of male and female attire reached a point in 1911 which suggested to one of _Punch's_ artists a new Sex Question puzzle. But while the female "nut" was becoming indistinguishable from the male, the male golfer had come to affect a bagginess of knickerbockers recalling the exuberance of the female cyclist of two decades earlier, and, as _Punch_ showed, exceedingly ill-suited for progress in a high wind. [Illustration: AGAINST THE WIND WITH THE WIND Disastrous influence of the sea-breezes on the modern "nut" coiffure. Recently witnessed by our artist at a popular watering-place.]