Note 5 — Chapter XI · The New Millennium.

The managers of the Island Provident Society also promptly determined to develop and apply the ideal system in their sphere of usefulness to the full extent that circumstances permitted. Thus a large part of the business of this old and respected society was the distribution of clothing to the destitute; and, as is always the case when times are hard, the extent of the demands made upon it for aid tended to exceed the means of supply contributed by the charitable. The managers, however, knew that it never would answer in using the ideal system to subserve the work of charity, to put the locally needy on the same footing as the heathen, and in answer to appeals for raiment distribute to them elaborate pictures of fine clothing, cut from the fashion-plates; for there was this essential difference in the situations, that the needy were at their doors, while the heathen were a great way off. They, therefore, hit upon this happy mean: they employed a competent artist, with a full supply of paints and brushes, and when any destitute person applied for clothing, they painted upon his person every thing he desired in way of clothing of the finest and most fashionable patterns, from top-boots to collars, and from blue swallow-tailed coats to embroidered neck-ties, with jewelry and fancy buttons to match. Of course, the first man who appeared in public thus arrayed created a profound sensation. But the idea was so novel, and had obviously so many advantages over the old way of clothing one’s self, that the supremacy of the ideal over the real was at once greatly strengthened. For example—and here was one of the greatest merits of the new system—it not only symbolized, but practically applied, the views of the most advanced financial philosophers; favored (as the orator-philosopher wished) “more democracy and less aristocracy in the clothes market;” and encouraged the use of the least costly material out of which the community could make clothes; while the painted cotton, silk, wool, and leather could be made to look so exactly like the real articles, that it was only when the attempt was made to exchange the representative for the real that the difference was clearly discernible. Furthermore, every garment devised in accordance with the new system was, in all cases, a perfect fit. The plague of buttons was annihilated. Every man could save time enough in dressing and undressing to enrich himself, if he only employed his economized moments usefully. Every man might, without embarrassment, sleep in his clothes; and if he desired to change his monkey-jacket three hundred and sixty-five times in a year for an overcoat, or an overcoat for a monkey-jacket, he could do it most expeditiously, without the waste of any raw material more expensive than paint; and thus the system, after a time, by a happy thought, got the name of the “three-sixty-five interchangeable.” Of course, this answered very well so long as the weather continued mild and pleasant; but later in the season, when it became cool and frosty, experience soon showed that the warming qualities of different kinds of paint were not essentially different; that something more than confidence was necessary to keep out the cold; and that the temperature and circulation of the body physical remained unaffected, whether a man painted himself sky-blue one day and pea-green the next.5