There
is often no difference perceptible to the ordinary eye between cheap and
high-priced clothing once the price tag is off. Jewels as a portable
form of concentrated costliness have been in favor from the earliest
ages, but now they are losing their factitious value through the advance
of invention. Rubies of unprecedented size, not imitation, but genuine
rubies, can now be manufactured at reasonable rates. And now we may hope
that lace may soon be within the reach of all, not merely lace of the
established forms, but new and more varied and intricate and beautiful
designs, such as the imagination has been able to conceive, but the hand
cannot execute.
Dissolving nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol we get the collodion
varnish that we are all familiar with since we have used it on our cut
fingers. Spread it on cloth instead of your skin and it makes a very
good leather substitute. As we all know to our cost the number of
animals to be skinned has not increased so rapidly in recent years as
the number of feet to be shod.
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