This suit, I may say, is the uniform of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Purity and Perfection, of which organization I am president, secretary, treasurer and sole member. I may add that I don't know of any one else who is eligible.You see, when a man gets to be 71, as I am, the world begins to look somber and dark. I believe we should do all we can to brighten things up and make ourselves look cheerful. You can't do that by wearing black, funereal clothes.And why shouldn't a man wear white? It betokens purity and innocence. I'm in favor of peek-a-boo waists and décolleté costumes. The most beautiful costume is the human skin, but since it isn't conventional or polite to appear in public in that garb along, I believe in wearing white.I don't know anything more hideous or disgusting in men's attire than the black clawhammer coat. A group of men thus adorned remind me more of a flock of crows than anything else. About the most becoming get up I ever saw in my life was out in the Sandwich Islands thirty years ago, where a native who wanted to appear at this best usually appeared in a pair of eyeglasses.
- quoted in Chicago Daily Tribune, 8 December 1906
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