Fashions.......................................

     I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request;  and after showing me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too good mourning for anything short of parents, he took my various dimensions, and put them down in a book.  While he was recording them he called my attention to his stock-in-trade, and to certain fashions which he said had "just come up," and to certain other fashions which he said had "just gone out."
     "And by that sort of thing we often lose a little mint of money," said Mr. Omer.  "But fashions are like human beings.  They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how;  and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how.  Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it from that point of view."
     I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly have been beyond me under any circumstances;  and Mr. Omer took me back into the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.
-Charles Dickens,  as excerpted from David Copperfield