Unable to find fault with the _tout ensemble_, our
mate made a violent attack on the liveries. He protested it was
indecent to put a "hired man"--the word _help_ never being
applied to the male sex, I believe, by the most fastidious New England
purist--in a cocked hat; a decoration that ought to be exclusively
devoted to the uses of ministers of the gospel, governors of States,
and militia officers. I had some notions of the habits of the great
world, through books, and some little learned by observation and
listening; but Marble scouted at most of my explanations. He put his
own construction on everything he saw; and I have often thought,
since, could the publishers of travels have had the benefit of his
blunders, how many would have profited by them. Gentlemen were just
then beginning to drive their own coaches; and I remember, in a
particular instance, an ultra in the new mode had actually put his
coachman in the inside, while he occupied the dickey in person. Such a
gross violation of the proprieties was unusual, even in London; but
there sat Jehu, in all the dignity of cotton-lace, plush, and a cocked
hat. Marble took it into his head that this man was the king, and no
reasoning of mine could persuade him to the contrary. In vain I
pointed out to him a hundred similar dignitaries, in the proper
exercise of their vocation, on the hammer-cloths; he cared not a
straw--this was not showing him one _inside_; and a gentleman
inside of a carriage, who wore so fine a coat, and a cocked hat in the
bargain, could be nothing less than some dignitary of the empire; and
why not the king! Absurd as all this will seem, I have known mistakes,
connected with the workings of our own institutions, almost as great,
made by theorists from Europe.
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