More especially one's dress was legislated upon, to the last warp and woof.

All girdles must be so many inches in length, and with such a number of tassels in front.

For a violation of this ordinance, before the face of all Mardi, the most dutiful of sons would cut the most affectionate of fathers.
Now, though like all Mardi, kings and slaves included, the people of Pimminee had dead dust for grandsires, they seldom reverted to that fact; for, like all founders of families, they had no family vaults.
Nor were they much encumbered by living connections; connections, some of them appeared to have none.

Like poor Logan the last of his tribe, they seemed to have monopolized the blood of their race, having never a cousin to own.
Wherefore it was, that many ignorant Mardians, who had not pushed their investigations into the science of physiology, sagely divined, that the Tapparians must have podded into life like peas, instead of being otherwise indebted for their existence.

Certain it is, they had a comical way of backing up their social pretensions.