REASONS FOR WEARING THE MUSTACHE. – A curious inquirer has been able to draw up a table of the different reasons for wearing a mustache. Having questioned not fewer than one thousand persons so adorned, their answers have helped him to the following result: - To avoid shaving, 69; to avoid catching cold, 32; to hide their teeth, 5; to take away from a prominent nose, 5; to avoid being taken as an Englishman abroad, 7; because they are in the army, 6; because they are Rifle Volunteers, 221; because Prince Albert does it, 2, because it is artistic, 29; because you are a singer, 3; because you travel a deal, 17; because you lived long on the continent, 1; because the wife likes it, 8; because you have weak lungs, 5; because it acts as a respirator, 29; because it is healthy, 77; because the young ladies admire it, 471; because it is considered “the thing,” 10; because he chooses, 1.

THE MOUSTACHE.
(From the United Service Gazette, July 29.)

Another triumph! another victory! Common sense has trampled folly and prejudices in the dust, and the moustache rises upon their ruins. No more shall the British soldier, in dread of the Browns in authority, diurnally excoriate himself with biting steel that his upper lip may be the more easily scorched, and his mouth and nose more readily receive foul vapours fraught with disease. No more shall Orientals taunt Western warriors with their effeminate looks, or village lasses give undue preference to French Chasseurs. Englishmen henceforth are to look like nature intended them to be, and what they were until Puritanical cant came in with its razors, and shaved off loyalty, moustache, and honest piety together. Lord Hardinge has at length decreed that as it has been found beneficial in Turkey (as if it had not been always beneficial everywhere) to wear the moustache, the same usage shall prevail in the army generally; that is to say, if the men and officers please. The thing is quite optional. He who loves the old motto, “a clean shirt and a shave,” or who cannot get the hairs to come out in a respectable force, may rasp away as long as he likes, and it will not be in the power of any one to question his taste or punish his adherence to our “ancient institutions.”

  But let not the men who prefer giving nature fair play be tempted into the mistake of unbridling her licentiousness. As a garden would become a noxious jungle were the pruning knife to be left to rust, and the hand of the Paxtons and Loddiges to remain forever inactive, so, thinks Lord Hardinge would the British soldier’s cheeks become a hairy wilderness, offensive to the view, if military regulation did not interpose a stern barrier to the prolific vegetation. Therefore, writeth the Adjutant-General: -

  “A clear space of two inches must be left between the corner of the mouth and the whisker, where whiskers are grown; the chin, the under lip, and at least two inches of the upper part of the throat, must be clean shaven, so that no hair can be seen above the stock on that place.”

  This we should suppose was intended to give the appearance of parterres, lawns, and gravel walks to the garden, did we not discern in the regulation a petty, artful, insidious attempt to compound for the toleration of the moustache by an abridgement of the whisker. Who can afford to cut away two inches of the jolly old whisker from the corner of the mouth, unless the article is in the habit of descending perpendicularly close to the ear? What sergeant-major, or sergeant, accustomed, in obedience to regimental orders, to cultivate his sandy red forest in a diagonal line from the ear to the vicinity of the nostril, can view the alarming sacrifice he is called upon to make without horror? We almost fear a revolution with the war cry of Vivent les favoris! A bas les moustaches. And then to think of the rigid measurement! Two inches, not a hair more or less! What a task for the drummers, the figaros of a corps, who will doubtless be supplied with compasses, or two inch rules, wherewith to take the exact dimensions of the “clear space!” Lord Hardinge, we all know, is a good deal of the red tapist, but this smacks so much of the sergeant-major, and evinces such an absence of the courageous spirit of innovation, that we cannot award him half the praise his good intentions should elicit. Wherein lies the virtue of the mysterious “clear space?” What is the use of insisting upon uniformity in an individual way, when the very order in which the injunction appears allows of such universal irregularity as to leave it discretional with the men to wear or not wear the moustache or the beard, or one, or neither? Surely the old grognards of Napoleon, whose faces were almost covered with black hair, did not make worse soldiers for the permitted growth of the glorious forests? But there is little use in arguing the point now. The fiat has gone forth for the limited moustache, and no further recognition of the rights of the “human face divine” will be made until the Press has laboured for a year or two. Military reformers are “ bit-by-bit” innovators. Yet we ought not to complain. Were they wholly rational there would be little left for us to say. As editors, we ought to be thankful that a “clear space” for censure has still been left us. We only want that, and “no favour.”