Cast-iron and Crimping

There is nothing more abhorrent, thought the bow legged man, than a man in a hat who should go hatless. Some heads just don’t suit a hat, either because they’re too large or they sit awkwardly, making them look more like foolscaps than hats, ribbons and baubles, tassels and crimping adding to the falsity of hats, there not quite being hats. The mercantilists, with their pin making machines and cotton gins, cast-iron soaking tubs, such fanciful ideas and notions, a fedora or a bowler, a Panama or a sou’wester, a toque or a balaclava, things woven and seamed together with stitching and pegs.