Americans and Others
on their way downtown. So absolute is this uniformity that the late Marquess of Ailesbury bore all his life a reputation for eccentricity, which seems to have had no other foundation than the fact of his wearing hats, or rather a hat, of distinctive shape, chosen with reference to his own head rather than to the heads of some odd millions of fellow citizens. The story is told of his standing bareheaded in a hatter's shop, awaiting the return of a salesman who had carried off his own beloved head-gear, when a short-sighted bishop entered, and, not recognizing the peer, took him for an assistant, and handed him his hat, asking him if he had any exactly like it. Lord Ailesbury turned the bishop's hat over and over, examined it carefully inside and out, and gave it back again. "No," he said, "I haven't, and I'll be damned if I'd wear it, if I had."
Even before the establishment of the invincible despotism which clothes the
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