Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE
bloomer, and we know the result. If Eve should
come again, in her ripe renown, and reintroduce her
quaint styles-well, we know what would happen.
And we should be cruelly embarrassed, along at
first.
The hoopskirt runs its course and disappears.
Nobody reasons about it. One woman abandons the
fashion; her neighbor notices this and follows her
lead; this influences the next woman; and so on
and so on, and presently the skirt has vanished out
of the world, no one knows how nor why; nor cares,
for that matter. It will come again, by and by;
and in due course will go again.
Twenty-five years ago, in England, six or eight
wine glasses stood grouped by each person's plate
at a dinner party, and they were used, not left idle
and empty; to-day there are but three or four in the
group, and the average guest sparingly uses about
two of them. We have not adopted this new fashion
yet, but we shall do it presently. We shall not think
it out; we shall merely conform, and let it go at
that. We get our notions and habits and opinions
from outside influences; we do not have to study
them out.
Our table manners, and company manners, and
street manners change from time to time, but the
changes are not reasoned out; we merely notice and
conform. We are creatures of outside influences;
as a rule we do not think, we only imitate. We cannot invent standards that will stick; what we mistake for standards are only fashions, and perishable.
We may continue to admire them, but we drop the
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