"Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire."

Is it the freakin' '60s again? Actually, obsession with stifling long hair goes further back--it's a very Puritan impulse. John Milton's Puritan friends made fun of him for his long hair, and the Puritans who came to America were appalled by (among other things) the long hair of the Native Americans. Nathaniel Hawthorne included this in " The May-Pole of Merry Mount ," his story of the ... [link]