H. G. Wells on Hats.

From a newspaper article: “It is not generally known in Europe—possibly I have been carried away by some misunderstanding—that in every considerable American city, large gatherings of mature, prosperous, well-dressed women are in permanent session. They sit in wait, it seems, for any passing notoriety, and having caught one, insist ‘on a few words.’ This year they are all wearing black hats. These hats stick in my mind. Ultimately of the most varied shapes, the original theme seems to have been cylindrical, so that the general effect of an assembly of smart American womankind of 1937 (New Zealand winter 1938) is that of a dump of roughly treated black tin cans.”