The Bond Street man is at
one end of the scale, the uncompromising heathen barber at the other;
but the same principles actuate both.
The Maori is even more courageous in his attempts to secure a true
decorative exterior, for he carves the surface of his manly frame into
deep meandering channels until he resembles a walking advertisement of
crochet-patterns for ladies. Dire is his suffering, long is the time of
healing; but, when he can appear among his friends with a staring blue
serpent coiled round his body from the neck to the ankle, when the rude
figure of the bounding wallaby ornaments his noble chest, he feels that
all his pain was worth enduring and that life is indeed worth living.
The primitive dandy of Central Africa submits himself to the magician of
the tribe, and has his front teeth knocked out with joy; the Ashantee
or the Masai has his teeth filed to sharp points--and each painful
process enables the victim to pose as a leader of fashion in the tribe.
As the race rises higher, the refinements of dandyism become more and
more complex, but the ruling motive remains the same, and the Macaroni,
the Corinthian, the Incroyable, the swell, the dude--nay, even the
common toff--are all mysteriously stirred by the same instinct which
prompts the festive Papuan to bore holes in his innocent nose.
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