You get so used to the Boston face and the Boston dress, that
a coat from New York or a visage from Chicago is at once conspicuous to
you; and in these people there was not only this strangeness, but the
different oddities that lurk in out-of-way corners of society everywhere
had started suddenly into notice. Long-haired men, popularly supposed to
have perished with the institution of slavery, appeared before me, and men
with various causes and manias looking from their wild eyes confronted
each other, let alone such charlatans as had clothed themselves quaintly
or grotesquely to add a charm to the virtue of whatever nostrum they
peddled. It was, however, for the most part, a remarkably well-dressed
crowd; and therein it probably differed more than in any other respect
from the crowd which a holiday would have assembled in former times. There
was little rusticity to be noted anywhere, and the uncouthness which has
already disappeared from the national face seemed to be passing from the
national wardrobe.
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