The Broadcloth the Enemy of Health

American gentlemen have adopted as a national costume, broadcloth—a thin, tight fitting black suit of broadcloth. To foreigners we seem always to be in mourning; we travel in black, we write in black and we work in black. The priest, the lawyer, the doctor, the literary man, the mechanic, and even the day laborer, choose always the same unwavering monotonous black broadcloth; a style and material which never ought to have been adopted out of the drawing-room or the pulpit; because it is a feeble and expensive fabric; because it is at the North no suitable protection against the cold, nor is it indeed any more suitable at the South. It is too thin to be warm in the winter, and too black to be cool in the summer; but especially do we object to it because the wearer is always afraid of soiling it by exposure. Young gentlemen will not play ball, or pitch quoits, or wrestle and tumble, or any other similar thing, lest their broadcloth should be offended. They will not go out into the storm, because the broadcloth will lose its lustre if the rain falls upon it; they will not run because they have no confidence in the strength of the broadcloth; they dare not mount a horse, or leap a fence, because broadcloth, as everybody knows, is so faithless. So these young men, and these older men, merchants, mechanics, and all, learn to walk, talk, and think soberly and carefully; they seldom venture even to laugh to the full extent of their sides.