"A few years since, a country trader in New-Hampshire, in making purchases of a little of every thing for his store, was offered, at a very low rate, a lot of coat buttons of the fashion of half a century since, about the size of a dollar. The keen-sighted trader, by the tailor's assistance, soon had his own coat decorated with them. At home the lads needed no better evidence of its being the latest fashion, than that the trader had just come from the metropolis. The old buttons went off at a great advance, and the village soon shone in Revolutionary splendor! If the shining beaux _thought_ they were dressed in the latest Parisian style, did they not feel as well as though they really were so? And did the supercilious eye with which they regarded the poor fellows who could not afford buttons larger than a cent, beam less with aristocracy than the exalted courtier's?
"One other illustrative anecdote occurs to us, which we cannot forbear giving. A few years since, two young milliners, located in a town in the interior of New-Hampshire, found it necessary for their reputation to follow the example of almost every milliner within fifty miles of the metropolis, and to go once a year to Boston for the latest fashions. Among the thrown-aside articles in a dry goods store, worthless from being out of date, were about one hundred and fifty bonnets. The calculating damsels, who had seen enough of the world to know that any fashion would go with a proper introduction, and knowing no good reason why they should remain useless in Boston, kindly took them off the merchant's hands for _six cents_ per bonnet. Arrived at home with their large stock of the '_latest fashions_,' they were careful to finish and decorate a couple in good style, and the next Sunday, (the day on which new fashions are generally displayed,) the 'Boston fashion' was whispered through the village--and not in vain; for it was not long, before the whole stock was disposed of, at from nine shillings to two dollars apiece! The distressing epidemic of a _new fashion_ thus speedily swept off nearly every bonnet in the village, of one year old and upwards--although many were in good health, and showed no signs of decay, till the pestilence began to rage."