An Automatic Hat.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 128, 14 November 1885, Page 6

An Automatic Hat.

We hear that in several cities of the United States the prominent men have adopted an automatically saluting hat. The principle is that when the person provided with one of these hats, meets an acquaintance, he merely presses a "button at his side, and the hat is thereupon raised by hidden machinery. If it be introduced in England we foresee a long line of calamities. Fancy the field for the practical jokist. For instance, lounging arm-in-arm with his bosom friend and seeing a ne^lymarried couple approach, he has only to tell his companion a regular side-splitter, and direct his laughing confrtrtfs attention to the beauty of the young- , wife, at the same time pressing his button, and the husband will at once ask for explanations, while driving the machinery of the automatic hat into the head of the happy wearer, to the intense delight of the jokist. 0, there will be a world of trouble ! Then these mechanical contrivances are always getting out of order. Fancy your hat obstinately stopping a foot away from your head and refusing to descend on a cold winter's morning, apart from the look of the thing ! Or think of a pig-headed hat refusing to answer the button when you meet a particular lady friend, or suppose the button should lose its control, and the hat should become joyous, making your walk to the City two miles of idiotic politeness. Oh ! it's not to be thought of.