The dress worn in public was still regarded by serious men as a matter of station; the Pietists had accustomed the citizen to wear dark or sober colours; but fine textures, buttons, unpretending embroidery and linen, demonstrated not less than perukes and swords the high-bred man. This was the dress to be worn in public, and must especially be put on when going out; and as it was inconvenient and--at least the perukes--difficult to put on and to powder without the help of others, a contrast wan produced by this between home and society which proscribed social intercourse at certain hours in the day, and made it formal and elaborate. At home a dressing-gown was worn, in which literary men received visits, and the "best" dress was carefully spared. Many things which appear to us as common necessaries were still quite unknown, and the absence of many comforts was not felt. In the year 1745 an Austrian non-commissioned officer begged of an imprisoned officer, from whom he had taken a watch, to wind it up for him; he had never had one in his hands. The worthy Semler had become a professor before he obtained by the aid of a bookseller his first silver watch; and he complained, about 1780, that then every master of arts, nay, every student thought he must have a watch; now, in every family of similar station, the third-form boy has a silver, and the student a gold watch. Besides the landed nobility, only the highest state officials and the richest merchants kept their own carriage and horses, and this more rarely than fifty years before. But literary men were then often advised by physicians not to fear the dangers of riding; schools were established, and riding-horses let out for hire. It did not indeed happen to every one as to the invalid Gellert, to have as a present for the second time, after the death of his renowned Dapple, a horse from the Elector's stables, with velvet saddle and housings embroidered in gold, which the dear professor, much moved after his manner, accepted, though with the greatest distrust as to the good temper of the horse, and was never weary of speaking of it to his acquaintance, whilst his groom showed the prodigy for money to the Leipzigers. As the dress of that day made people very sensitive to damp, sedan-chairs came into fashion; they were as frequently used as now the droschky; the bearers were known by a kind of livery, had their appointed stations, and were to be found wherever the nobility and the public appeared in numbers: at great dances, on Sunday at the church doors, and at the theatres.