What strikes one, however, as most curious in the controversy between the Short-Hairs and the Swallow-Tails is the illustration it affords of the rigidity with which every class or grade in civilization treats its own social conventions, whatever they may be, as final, and as having some subtle but necessary connection with morals. When the Indian squats round the tribal pot in his breech-clout, and eats his dinner with his dirty paw, he is fully satisfied that he is as well equipped, both as regards dress and manners, not only as a man need be, but as a man ought to be. The toilet, the chamber, and the dinner-table of a plain New England farmer he treats as wasteful and ridiculous excess, and if good for anything, good only for plunder. The farmer, on the other hand, loathes the Indian and his ways, and thinks him a filthy beast, and that he (the farmer) has reached the limits of the proper as regards clothes and food and personal habits, and that the city man who puts greater elaboration into his life is a fribble, who is to be pitied, if not despised and distrusted. In short, we can hardly go one step into the controversy without coming on the old question, What are luxuries and what necessities? and, as usual, the majority decides it in the manner that best suits itself. It may be said without exaggeration that the progress of civilization has consisted largely in the raising of what is called "the standard of living," or, in other words, the multiplication of the things deemed necessary for personal comfort, and, as this raising of the standard has always been begun by the few, the many have always fought against it as a sign of selfishness or affectation until they themselves were able to adopt it.