Hair, Gold Hill Daily News (Article, 1864)
Full Text
HAIR.
Your correspondent is free to admit a strong prejudice against short-haired women and men, with long-hair parted in the middle, such as Miss Ernestine L. Rose, Abby Kelly, or John C. Fremont, and I can't say that I admire the passion of cropping off the flowing tresses and coming out a la Butcher Boy, now so prevalent in America. It has broken out with violence in the West, and the papers are full of incidents illustrative of the evil effects thereof. A single Chicago paper, now before me, contains accounts of three cases arising in their Police Court within a single day of girls being caught in male apparel on the streets. You see that the prevailing fashion enables a man or woman to appear in the garments of either sex at will, and how the deuce is a modest man like myself to detect the fraud. Then, too, see how many mistakes and misadventures might occur to mar the happiness of families, and ruin the peace and prospects of such a man as myself. I don't claim to be a woman-killer--so to speak-- and have no idea that if left to myself I should ever be found acting the part of a gay deceiver; but let us suppose a very supposable case: I go up to Virginia City, and put up for the night at one of the palatial hotels of the metropolis of the Silver Land. Going out in the evening to call on my brother quill-drivers, and as in duty bound take something once or twice. Returning to mine hotel, I take my key and ascend ot my room, having been informed by the gentlemanly clerk that owing to the crowded condition of the house I must sleep in the same bed with a respectable gentlemen belonging to one of the first families of Aurora, who has already retired. By a very natural misconception of the directions given to me, I turn down the right hand hall and enter the first chamber on the left, instead of taking the left hand hall and entering the first door on the right. A head, shorn a la Meken, lays on the back pillow, the owner thereof meantime indulging in a quiet and agreeable, but still well defined snore. I turn in and annihilate the luminary without further question. How the deuce am I to know that the partner of my couch is the beloved spouse of the owner of 500 feet in the Gould & Curry, who is at that moment in dulging in a quiet little game of draw for intellectual amusement, in the back room of the Boomerang Saloon? how am I to settle with him when he comes in and finds a better looking man in his place? and what could I do to satisfy my ever adored wife, Elizabeth Jane, when she hears of it, that my intentions were honorable, and that I am the victim of "circumstances beyond my control?" That's what I want to know. I have examined this short-haired question in all its bearings, and I tell you it won't do. This thing is being carried too far, altogether too far.
