THE ANTI-HAT LIFTING ASSOCIATION.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 118, 7 May 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ANTI-HAT LIFTING ASSOCIATION.

A number of gentlemen in Liesthal, the capital of the half-canton of Basle, which is politically separate from the old canton of the same name, have formed themselves into a curious society. They name their fellowship, whose rules they are bound on oath to observe, the ‘ Nicht-Hat-abzielr Verein,’that is, ‘The Anti-Hat Lifting Association.’ Those social nonconformists protest against the obligation laid upon them by the tyranny of unwritten law, immemorial custom, and inherited tradition of saluting every neighbour whom they may chance to meet in street or field by lifting the hat. The membership of the society is already considerable ; the members bind themselves to uncover their heads neither to man nor to woman. At the same time, lest they should be thought to be uncourteous, they do not totally renounce all form of salutation, but substitute a more or less graceful movement of the hand—akin, it seems, to the military saulte—for the conventional removal of the hat. A similar society to the one now being organised at Liesthal formerly existed in Germany, but its members became the butt of general ridicule throughout the group of small towns in which they attempted to propagate their reform. Hence, when they found that their mockers were many and their imitators few, they, by degrees, succumbed again to the demands of custom and fashion. Discourtesy and impertinence may undoubtedly lurk behind the most correct and effusive manner of uplifting the hat, and we can readily grant that true politeness—or civility in the highest sense—consists as little in the uplifting of the hat from tlie brows as in the casting of the whole body upon the ground, after the Oriental manner. Nevertheless, were population is thin, and everyone knows everyone else by sight, we imagine that there is only one way of abolishing so harmless and kindly a fashion, and that is by the slow progress of increasing the number of inhabitants from hundreds to thousands. It is as impossible to be conventionally polite to everybody as to be hospitable to everybody in a population of a million.— ‘ Globe. ’