They dress there not only in
keeping with their work and their play, but in the indulgence of
any freak of personal fancy, so that in the street of a
provincial town, like Bath, for instance, you will encounter in a
short walk a greater range of trousers, leggings, caps, hats,
coats, jackets, collars, scarfs, boots and shoes, of tan and
black, than you would meet at home in a month of Sundays. The
differences do not go to the length of fashions, such as reduce
our differences to uniformity, and clothe, say, our legs in
knickerbockers till it is found everybody is wearing them, when
immediately nobody wears them. Only ladies, of fashions beyond
men's, gratify caprices like ours, and even these perhaps not
voluntarily. In the obedience they show to the rule that they
must never wear the same dinner or ball gown twice, it was said
(but who can ever find out the truth of such things?) that they
sometimes had sent home from the dressmaker's a number of dresses
on liking, and wore them in succession, only to return them, all
but one at least, as not liked, the dressmaker having found her
account in her work being shown in society.
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