The Fur-Bearing Animal

Two years ago the coon-skin coat, at an initial cost of from two to six hundred dollars, was regarded as standard equipment by the sport-model type of undergraduate. Many were entirely happy but a few hopelessly envious and dejected without one. A large number of undergraduates would, however, tell their fathers that everybody was wearing one. Its vogue is passing, even among its erstwhile votaries. It would be pleasant to believe that it was being discarded because it was expensive. I am afraid this had nothing to do with it. Some undergraduate must have noticed that young men in business and about town did not go about in such Eskimoish gear. He probably felt it was a bit rah-rah. Then somebody said "collegiate." That ended it, and it began to give way to the more genteel black derby and the chesterfield.

Ed. Note,--Dean Gauss, laus Deo, is right. The raccoon coat is very nearly extinct. But is he not mistaken as to the cause of its disappearance? Perhaps a more effective reason for its demise was its adoption by the drugstore cowboy and the "Harvard Square student" and a consequent bringing of the college man to a realization of his grotesqueness. --Dean Gauss of Princeton, in the Saturday Evening Post.