234

IDENTIFYING ONE'S SELF

The American Aversion of Uniforms Is Unwittingly Disregarded in Many Cases.

Mrs. Peattie Writes of Unions and Art- The Musical Union of Omaha and the Albert Concert.

Are you glad that you are what you are? Richard Harding Davis, in his charming series of letters entitled "Our English Cousins," says: "In America, we hate uniforms because they have been twisted into meaning badges of servitude; we will our coachmen shave their mustaches. This tends to make every class of citizens look more or less alike. But in London, you can always tell a bus driver from the driver of a four-wheeler, whether he is on his box or not. The Englishman recognizes that, if he is in a certain social grade, he is likely to remain there, and so, instead of trying to dress like someone else, in a class to which he will never reach, he 'makes up' for the part in life he is meant to play, and the 'bus driver buys a high white hat, and the barmaid is content to wear a turn-down collar man would as soon think of wearing a false nose as a mustache. He accepts his position and is proud of it, and the butcher's boy sits up in his cart just as smartly, and squares his elbows, and straightens his legs and balances his whip with as much pride as any driver of the mall cart in the park.

"All this helps to give any man you meet individually. The Hanson cab driver is not ashamed of being an abandon cab driver, not is he thinking of the day when he will be a boss contractor and tear up the streets over which he crawls, looking for a fare, and so he buys artificial flowers for himself and his horse, and soaps his rubber mat, and sits up straight and business-like, and if you put him into livery, you would not have to teach him how to look well in it. He does not, [word] our drivers, hang one leg over the edge of the seat, or drive with one leg across the other, and leaning forward with his whip. The fact that you are just as good as the next man, as the constitution says you are, does not absolve you from performing the very humble work your chance to be doing, in spite of the constitution, in a slovenly spirit."

This presents a problem that all of us must have considered at one time another. The constitution has, indeed, assured us equal rights, but it could not, nor could any human agency make us equals. What folly to suppose that you are equal of Emerson, or that I am the equal of Edison!