Another instance of the same illogicality I observed the other day at some kind of “At Home.”  I saw what appeared to be a human being dressed in a black evening-coat, black dress-waistcoat, and black dress-trousers, but with a shirt-front made of Jaegar wool.  What can be the sense of this sort of thing?  If a man thinks hygiene more important than convention (a selfish and heathen view, for the beasts that perish are more hygienic than man, and man is only above them because he is more conventional), if, I say, a man thinks that hygiene is more important than convention, what on earth is there to oblige him to wear a shirt-front at all?  But to take a costume of which the only conceivable cause or advantage is that it is a sort of uniform, and then not wear it in the uniform way—­this is to be neither a Bohemian nor a gentleman.  It is a foolish affectation, I think, in an English officer of the Life Guards never to wear his uniform if he can help it.  But it would be more foolish still if he showed himself about town in a scarlet coat and a Jaeger breast-plate.  It is the custom nowadays to have Ritual Commissions and Ritual Reports to make rather unmeaning compromises in the ceremonial of the Church of England.  So perhaps we shall have an ecclesiastical compromise by which all the Bishops shall wear Jaeger copes and Jaeger mitres.  Similarly the King might insist on having a Jaeger crown.  But I do not think he will, for he understands the logic of the matter better than that.  The modern monarch, like a reasonable fellow, wears his crown as seldom as he can; but if he does it at all, then the only point of a crown is that it is a crown.  So let me assure the unknown gentleman in the woollen vesture that the only point of a white shirt-front is that it is a white shirt-front.  Stiffness may be its impossible defect; but it is certainly its only possible merit.

Let us be consistent, therefore, about Christmas, and either keep customs or not keep them.  If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you do not like Christmas; go away and celebrate something else; I should suggest the birthday of Mr. M’Cabe.  No doubt you could have a sort of scientific Christmas with a hygienic pudding and highly instructive presents stuffed into a Jaeger stocking; go and have it then.  If you like those things, doubtless you are a good sort of fellow, and your intentions are excellent.  I have no doubt that you are really interested in humanity; but I cannot think that humanity will ever be much interested in you.  Humanity is unhygienic from its very nature and beginning.  It is so much an exception in Nature that the laws of Nature really mean nothing to it.  Now Christmas is attacked also on the humanitarian ground.  Ouida called it a feast of slaughter and gluttony.  Mr. Shaw suggested that it was invented by poulterers.  That should be considered before it becomes more considerable.