Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [54]

This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was molded: such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 54

Note

The deadpan catalogue equates the language-law of opera translation with hair brushes and buttonhole flowers, showing Archer’s world as a set of interchangeable, equally arbitrary rites.