But so soon
as wealth begins appreciably to accumulate in the community, and
so soon as a given school begins to lean on a leisure-class
constituency, there comes also a perceptibly increased insistence
on scholastic ritual and on conformity to the ancient forms as
regards vestments and social and scholastic solemnities. So, for
instance, there has been an approximate coincidence between the
growth of wealth among the constituency which supports any given
college of the Middle West and the date of acceptance -- first
into tolerance and then into imperative vogue -- of evening dress
for men and of the d?collet? for women, as the scholarly
vestments proper to occasions of learned solemnity or to the
seasons of social amenity within the college circle. Apart from
the mechanical difficulty of so large a task, it would scarcely
be a difficult matter to trace this correlation. The like is true
of the vogue of the cap and gown.
Cap and gown have been adopted as learned insignia by many
colleges of this section within the last few years; and it is
safe to say that this could scarcely have occurred at a much
earlier date, or until there had grown up a leisure-class
sentiment of sufficient volume in the community to support a
strong movement of reversion towards an archaic view as to the
legitimate end of education.
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