| 276A TALK ABOUT CHEAP DRESS
Mrs. Peattie Tells the Girls How to Gaib Themselves Tustily and Economically.
Dress Reform and Those Who Eduate It- A Paper Read to the Young Women's Christian association- and the girls who attend the Noon Day Real.
One of the fundamental differences between civilization and savagery, is that in savagery a person is not obliged to wear any more clothes than conduces to comfort, whereas in civilization, a person is under obligations to make himself more or less uncomfortable by the wearing of many, and elaborate garments. In fact, to such a large extent is artificially confounded with civilization, that it is almost safe to say, the more uncomfortable a person's clothes feel, the more highly civilized he is. To be sure, it does occasionally occur to some of us a better and homester civilization might teach us to be at once comfortable and fashionable, but after experimenting a while with Greek drapenses and empire robes, we return to Demorest and the fashionable book, and to all the discomforts of the age, with meekness of spirit.
The pleasantry of the old world, shut in their quiet valleys, or wailed in their mountain towas, are not susceptible to the fashious, but have come, instead, to adopt a national dress, which descends from mother to daughter, and which is made of materials that outlast two generations. The Breton woman would take shame to herself as a spend thrift if she got a new gala gown every year. She is quite content with her now kerchief, and an ocassional addition to her silver ornaments, and would look with disdain on the girl who found it necessary to change even the fashions of her jewelry. as one who might well expect, and would certaintly deserve, to come to want in her old age. However, little by little, these marvelous old costumes of Europe are disappearing as the railways make their way among the quiet folk. and the women from the cities incite the gentle peasants to a futile rivalry. For, indeed, it is most futile. The peasant, used to finding a sort of uniform prescribed for every occasion, and to having costumes provided which are the cumulative result of the exercise of taste for centuries, has no idea how to exercise her individual taste. She has been so long provided with ideas, finding them ready made to her hand, that when once she rejects these old ideas she is singularly devoid of original ones. She has hitherto had a certain kind of a garment for christening, for marrying, for burying, for working and for dancing. Let her put aside these appropriate and characteristic garments, and she will produce but a hideous caricature of the prevailing fashions. You have, all of you, for example, noticed some brown-faced bohemian woman on our streets. About her round, comely face will be a kerchief of orange dud purple. Her purple skirt had crimson waist, her shawl of wonderful weave and many colors, her stone ankles with their purple stockings, her strong-shoes, and her awkward but splendidly powerful stride, make her a remarkable figure. Her clothing is appropriate. It is harmonious to herself. She and the clothes are in accord, and she makes a pleasant sight to the eye. But wait a few weeks. She will have observed, and she will have visited the bargain stores. And what is the result? Shoes which have destroyed the strength of her old gait, without giving her any of the grace of movement which the women possess whom she would faith imitate, a hat of many colors, which will not stay on straight, and which perches above her smoothly braided hair in a ridiculous fashion; an ill-fitting cloak which she does not know how to wear; and absurdly made dress which draggles in the dirt. From being a peculiar but appropriately dressed woman, she has become a guy and a stoven. She has, in short, emerged from the comforts of semi civilization into the discomforts of civilization, without acquiring any of the style which is the mitigating circumstance of fashionable dressing.
Women have grown a tride suspicious of those who talk to them about dress reform, because of the experiences that we have had in our attempts at wearing reformed clothes. First, there was the deeply respected Amelia Bloomer, who gave us a convenient, comfortable, hygienic, and utterly hideous costume which suggested badly made underclothes and which was worn by a few women with more moral courage than esthecism for a few mouths or years and then discarded. Later on came the efforts of the esthetes, and we of the present generation tried sad green draperies embroidered with conventionalized and tried to think we did not look untidy. But we know that we did. We working women have nothing to do with Greek draperies, and anyone who offers them to us is a fool. We cannot sweep, iron, wash, write, sew, wait at the dry goods counter, use the typewriter, carry the babies and canvass for books in Greek draperies. Moreover, we will not try Draperies are pretty things to lecture in, and to give physical exercises in, or to wear when we are playing the violin to a perfumed audience. But the Greek gown is an ideal thing for our most elegant hours, and is no more a part of this bustling, energetic, relentless age than is the Koman toga. And heaven knows what the business man of today would do in a toga. Therefore I advise you whenever the dress reform lecturer begins to tell you to wear Greek draperies, to leave her to the mellow flow of her own ideas, and hurry off about your business. Such talk may earn a living for the lecturer, but it will never be of any use to you I am morally sure that if I went through one of my hurried days in Greek draperies that before night they would be fluttering about me in sheds like a battleflag after an engagement.
No, for work and for play, we must have tidy, convenient, trim clothes, which will not get in our way, which will become us and which are fashionable. One of the choicest remarks of the dress reform lecturer is to advise one net to wear fashionable clothes. The reason she gives is that it entails much expense, is apt to be unbecoming, and is often injurious to the health, and disfiguring to the body. These are good reasons, and we might profoundly respect them if we were not morally certain that as soon as the lecturer got well out of sight of the audience to which she has been given such advice, that she will, herself, don a garment of the most fashionable make. I am not going to tell you not to dress in the fashion because I do not believe in wasting energy. I know, whatever I may say, that you will dress just as fashioably as you know how. and as your purse will permit. And, therefore. I shall say nothing against-it and especially, as I dress just as fashionably as I can myself. I would very much rather spend the time this evening you how to dress appropriately . The Parisian is the best dressed woman in the world-unless-it is the New Yorker-for the reason that she knows how to dress appropriately. The trouble with almost all young girls is unless they have mothers who exercise a great deal of firmness, that they try to dress too well. That is to say, they wear finery. Now, there are only a few places where one may appropriately wear finery. And if you are not in the way of going to such places, then do not spend your money on it. If you do not go to the parties, balls, dinners and afternoon receptions, do not buy such materials such colors as you would naturally wear at such places, and which are at only for such places. Do not pretend to be anything but what you are. One does not succeed by pretending, but by being exceedingly honest in regard to one's self. If your purse is limited, then waste none of its precious contents in purchasing cheap finery which will show its cheapness, and mark you as cheap, too.
Never get a cheap silk when you can buy a good cashmere with the same money. A plain material, honest of its kind is always preferable to a pretentious material which is dishonest of its kind.
Is stocking up one's wardrobe, one should begin with the necessities first. Get your neat home dresses, your tidy and service street dresses, your dress for church, the theater, or evening wear at your friends' homes; then after that, if you can afford to get any finery, or have any call to wear finery, why, buy it, that is to say, if by doing so you do not neglect any duty to others, or to yourself. A large part of the money spent for gowns is put in trimming. And it is a safe proposition that in nine cases out of the trimming hurts a gown more than it helps it. Dressmakers, however good in taste naturally. are apt to become enamored of their fashion book, and they study the plates they see in them, rather than the women who come to them to be dressed. For example, a short time ago someone conceived the unhappy ties of running ruffles or bands of silk around the skirt at equal intervals, thus slicing the body up into three or four sections. The effect was as bad as it possibly could be from an artistic point of view, and the woman who wore a skirt trimmed in the fashion could not look picturesque, no matter how graceful she might naturally be, or how much she paid for her clothes Women with an instict for good dressing very soon perceived this and are discarding the fashion as one which has no elements of beauty. As one uses discrimination in every other act of life, so one must use discrimination in every other act of life, so one must use discrimination in fashions. in telling you to be as fashionable as possible, I am only incaning to be honest with you. It goes without saying that women will try to be stylish. If they can only discover what is good style and what is bad, and will have the distinction to choose the good all will be well. I say the distinction, for it does indeed take a person of some personal pride and sureness of herself to be able to reject as unworthy of her a fashion over, which the rest of the world is going wild. But the lady will not wear anything grotesque, or immodest or out of keeping, no matter how fashionable it may be. She will only be fashionable so long as it is in keeping with dignity and propriety.
Economy sometimes takes bad forms. I have known women to let their tins, overtrimmed gowns, as they became shabby degenerate into morning dresses. And arrayed in this solled finery they would drag about their work, untidy and repusive in appearance. I have known girls to wear out their white party slippers and the light silk stockings doing up the housework in the morning. There is no economy in such proceedings. Life is so short that we cannot afford to waste any of it in looking slovenly. The true economy is to wear work clothes in working hours. if you are doing housework, come down to your work in the morning in a neat gingham, with your hair carefully combed, an apron out and a collar. Please wear a collar or some equivalent for it. There is nothing so freshens up the face as a bit of white about the neck. Do not, under any circumstances, wear curl papers or any other disfiguring thing about your head. There is no excuse for it. it is an insult to the miracle of God's new day to appear with the head disfigured. I honestly think that a wife who appears in curl papers has no right to complain if her husband makes love to another woman. Romeo would have revolted at the sight of curl papers. And it may be added that they seem quite as bad at night as in the daytime. A woman has no business to look ridiculous at any hour of the day or night.
But all this is, perhaps, wide of the subject. To return to working dresses. If your work is of the sort that brings you down town. let your business dress be severe-severe is not too strong a word to use. Wear some becoming, but dark color, black, blue, brown or gray. Do not waste money on trimming. It will only detract from the tidiness of the gown, catch the dust and be a nuisance from its need of repair. Let your dress be good fitting, keep it well brushed it, do it with a flower or a bit of ribbon, not with the trimming. Let your street hat be as severe as your dress One occasionally sees young girls wearing light, meuh trimmed hats to their work. These have probably been their theater hats which have become soiled, and are being worn out. But such economy is indeed mistaken. Do not wear out your finery at your work. better wear a 50 cent sailor hat at your work than a soiled theater hat.
If you are not very sure of your taste, and if you have not a genuine talent for combining colors, you will find it much the safer way. in planning a street costume. to have every article of one color. If hat, wrap, dress and gloves are of one quiet tint, any girl will present an attractive appearance; whereas, if one ventures on contrasts, she may make a distressing error if your means are such that you can seldom buy new wrap, it is best to decide upon the color that is most becoming to you, and adhere to it, more or less, season in and season out You think this would not be pleasant? Think it over a moment. Almost all of us look better in one color than in any other. For example, there is a lovely lady in this town, a dear friend of mine, who has a beautiful red brown hair. Her eyes are red-brown too. Her complexion is very delicate She looks very much better in red-brown than any other other color. When she wears that she becomes a sort of symphony. And she is so well aware of the fact that in one shade and another she wears red-brown year in and year out, and has come to be known to her friends by that wonderful hue. She has one of the most hormonious personalities imaginable, and is so pictoresque that she always arrests a stranger's eye. So I really think, that for usual wear it is well to choose one of the staple colors, if I may so term them, and in this way it is not necessary to get a new costume throughout every time a fresh gown is purchasedm but the gloves and hat left over from the old costume will do to wear with the new one, and the harmony will be preserved and the money saved.
It is always hard to advise young women to save in the matter of shoes and gloves. Shoes and gloves cost one more than one's dresses One does like to have a shoes that fits perfectly and looks well, and a glove that harmonizes with her gown, and which is not soiled. No incongruity is more offensive than a fresh face of a woman and a soiled glove. When one's purse is narrow it becomes necessary to exercise caution in buying gloves, not alone because of the difference in their durability, but also because of the great difference in their capacity for keeping clean. The undressed mousquetaire tan colored glove is the most artistic glove ever made. Perhaps it is the only really artistic glove worn to day. But it becomes soiled the first time that one wears it. If one has a half dozen pairs, and can have them cleaned as they become soiled, it is very well. But if one is limited to one, or at most, two pairs of gloves, it is very certain that they will not be kept clean. A woman's hand is a sweet thing. It appeals to the imagination And no woman who appreciates it will degrade it by putting it in a dirty glove if she an help it. I admit that it takes a great deal of energy. as well as some money to keep one's toilet in constant repair. But it takes energy to enable one to succeed in anything. It takes energy, for example to keep the buttons sewed on your shoes. The woman who does not sew the buttons on her shoes is fit for crimes against domestic comfort too distressing to even mention.
By dressing simply, by getting rid of the idea that one looks better in finery than in plain clothes, one can afford to have the underclothing in a attractive condition. I have seen women undress who reminded me of whited sopuichers, so fair were they without and so unslightly underneath. In the purchasing of gowns. it requires discrimipation, You will do much better to buy good cloth and make your underclothes than to buy it ready made. The cloth in ready made underclothing is almost invariably poor. and comes much trimmed to make it attractive. have your under garments fit you. Have them well made. Trim them appropriately, and have plenty of them. Do not wear any garments that cannot be frequently washed. And please do not imagine that, because some garments chances to be dark in color that it does not deed to be washed just as often as if it were white. Forgive me for saying these things. Perhaps they are superficious. As to the comparative durability of ready-made and home-made clothing. The ready-made will war about eighteen months, while the home-made will usually wear two years and a half. May I also beg you to be very very sure there are no wrinkles in your stockings, and that your petticoats are short, so that if it is muddy they will not become softed, and that you will keep fresh braid on the bottoms of your dress skirts. It takes time and hard work, but it is worth while. Besides, why not work hard? Nothing worth getting was ever attained without it.
There is one great economy I wish to speak to you about before we leave this subject of underclothing. And that is, to economize the body God has given you. Whatever else you do, do not waste his strength by abusing it. Do not draw it out of its fair shape with torture vests of steel. In other words do not lace your corsets. I heard the other day of a woman whose bust measure was thirty-eight inches and her waist measure twenty. I can only say that she came under the category of a criminal. She has injured her body And to injure the body is a crime. IF she ever has a child, it will be fairly safe to predict that he will have a tendency toward consumption, or, in some other way, show a fatal weakness Woman was given the sacred mission of bearing children. And while she may at times try to forget this, she cannot escape from her destiny. Her responsibilities are with her. She is accountable to God. If she puts upon the world children whom through deliberate fault of her own, are puny in body or in mind her punishment will surely come, and it is very apt to come right here on Earth. If a mother could have a worse torture than to watch a child dying a disease bequeathed it by her own folly. I do not know what it is. And I firmly believe that the woman who "faces" lays herself liable to encounter such a sorrow and such remorse.
See that your waist measures from twenty-four to twenty-eight inches. That is as nature intended at the least. Never ind the false measurements to which your eyes have become accustomed. Besides, it the proportions are right, you will not be conscious of anything out of the usual. Give yourself room to breath and you will and that you can work without fatigue. that you will be much more cheerful and that you have a concsious pleasure in activity, and unarticulaity in walking.
(Following this came and the detailed description of a neat and inexpensive summer outfitk such as could be afforded by almost any young girl.)
Economize the time you spend thinking about your clothes. Do not waste your time dreaming about them, or planning about them, or talking about them, any more than necessary. There is very much more need for economizing in the time spent in taling and thinking about clothes than in economizing the money spent on them. When you must get some new things make up your mind what you want, buy them, pay for them, make them or have them made, and do it as quickly as you can and with as little thought as may be. The subject is all imporant one. It matters how you look. Dress and address they say, are the things by which one stranger must estimate another. I believe that God would not have so decorated the earth and the sky, if he had not meant us to imitate them. We are to use beautiful forms, beautiful colors, perfumes and fine fabrics, to have changes and decorations, just as he has shown us. The body is a sacred temple, and it is but right that it should be decorated. But do it and then forget it.
There are two bad classes of shoppers. One class dreads the work, puts it off, frets about it, and does it poorly and reluctantly; and other class goes to it with avidity, haunts the counters saks for samples, broods over them, calls in her friends to consult with her, and makes her purchases as if life and death depended upon them. Both of these classes are deplorable. Shopping is pleasant if one has money to pay for wist due needs, and it ought to be done very quickly. Indeed, I cannot see how women of intelligence manage to take so long about it. Fifteen minutes ought to suffice for the purchase of any gown.
Then do, please, consider what you are like in buying your clothes. Take your personality into consideration. If you have a sallow complexion do not buy a gray gown. If you are thin and tall, do not dress in stripes. Never, whatever you are, dress in plaids, No one but a child should wear plaids. If your face is florid, do not wear red or bright blue. If you are fleshy do not shorten your appearance with a much trimmed waist. But on the other hand if you have a lithe, long body; do not try to slice it up. Make the most of your good points.
So many make the mistake of trying to mitigate any distinguising feature, What I mean is, if you are tall and slender, do not try to make yourself seem less so. On the contrary, make the most of it by wearing gowns which will show your gracefulness of structure. If you have eyes, hair and complextion which are in harmony, do not try to find gowns whichare in contrast so much as those which are in sympathy.
Give dress its due importance in your lives-no more and no less. It seems to me the woman with well-rounded mind will make dress a part of her life, naturally and simply without fret or fume, without excess or prodigality. She will learn to subordinate her clothes to herself. Her personality will always dominate her apparel, even while it expresses itself by means of it. You can tell a lady by her dress. And you an also tell a cultured woman by her absence of self-conciousness in regard to dress. The silly female top with her extreme and senseless fashions, it even more objectionable than the slovenly woman with holes in the fingers of her gloves, and dragging skirts and ill fitting waist; but both are repulsive, unwomanly and a mistake. Daintless seems an essential part of a woman, to me. But daintless has nothing to do with foppery. The trivial mind confesses itself in its elaborate and vain apparel. The abstracted, careless mind shows itself in ill-sorted, poorly-made and unbeautiful garments. The careless mind may be noble and often is, but the noble and intellectual woman who does not look after her dress does herself a great injustice and lessons her influence. And the top, fortunately, shows just what she is.
Buy what best suits your purse and tastes. Have it free from nervous, irritating trimming. Do not let it look as if a woman had worn her eyes or her back as if a woman had worn her eyes or her back out on it. And then, once having got it on, act as if you did not know there was such a thing in the world as clothes. If you can learn to do this you will have acquired the secret of repose.
Throw away your solid fluery. Have the courage to burn the ribbon, the feather, the gloves, and the lace you cannot clean. Never wear finery to your work. Never wear finery to your work. Never buy finery until you have got everything you need, and only then if you do not need a new book, or something of equal importance. Keep your buttons on, your dress binding whole, your gloves mended and your clothes in general repair. See that such trifling and inexpensive adjuucts to your toilet as veils, handkerchiefs, neck rushing etc. are always perfectly fresh. And always err, if you err at all, on the side of overplainness la dress.
If you can remember these things and apply them, you will have learned how to dress with taste and with economy.
Elia W. Peattie.
CUT OFF HIS TAIL.
At Madras, some time ago, a valuable lion, having incautiously allowed his tail to stray into an adjoining cage, the tail was seized by an evil dipused leopard, close to the lion's body, when, as the lion attempted to escape. almost the whole of the skin of his tail was stripped off. This was followed by such an amount of inflammation that the lion's life was in danger. Surgeon Major Miller, brother of the late Prf. Miller of Edinburgh, the surgeon to the governor of Madras, volunteered to perform amputation. The lion was seized in his cage and his head covered with a cap containing a considerable quantity of chloroform. He was then dragged to the edge of the cage and the tail passed through the bars, where Dr. Miller cleverly performed his operation. The animal made a good recovery.
QUARANINE.
French Journalism are criticising the attitude of United States delegates to the sanitary convention at Paris. The Americans have opposed every measure tending to make quarantine less rigid, Their object is to make the regulations so close that quarantine measures an be need to restrict immigration.
NAPOLEAN'S BOOK.
A collection of books from Napoleon's library at St. Helens, once the property of Jerome Bonaparte, sold at a very low figure recently at a Londom auction.
| 276A TALK ABOUT CHEAP DRESS
Mrs. Peattie Tells the Girls How to Gaib Themselves Tustily and Economically.
Dress Reform and Those Who Eduate It- A Paper Read to the Young Women's Christian association- and the girls who attend the Noon Day Real.
One of the fundamental differences between civilization and savagery, is that in savagery a person is not obliged to wear any more clothes than conduces to comfort, whereas in civilization, a person is under obligations to make himself more or less uncomfortable by the wearing of many, and elaborate garments. In fact, to such a large extent is artificially confounded with civilization, that it is almost safe to say, the more uncomfortable a person's clothes feel, the more highly civilized he is. To be sure, it does occasionally occur to some of us a better and homester civilization might teach us to be at once comfortable and fashionable, but after experimenting a while with Greek drapenses and empire robes, we return to Demorest and the fashionable book, and to all the discomforts of the age, with meekness of spirit.
The pleasantry of the old world, shut in their quiet valleys, or wailed in their mountain towas, are not susceptible to the fashious, but have come, instead, to adopt a national dress, which descends from mother to daughter, and which is made of materials that outlast two generations. The Breton woman would take shame to herself as a spend thrift if she got a new gala gown every year. She is quite content with her now kerchief, and an ocassional addition to her silver ornaments, and would look with disdain on the girl who found it necessary to change even the fashions of her jewelry. as one who might well expect, and would certaintly deserve, to come to want in her old age. However, little by little, these marvelous old costumes of Europe are disappearing as the railways make their way among the quiet folk. and the women from the cities incite the gentle peasants to a futile rivalry. For, indeed, it is most futile. The peasant, used to finding a sort of uniform prescribed for every occasion, and to having costumes provided which are the cumulative result of the exercise of taste for centuries, has no idea how to exercise her individual taste. She has been so long provided with ideas, finding them ready made to her hand, that when once she rejects these old ideas she is singularly devoid of original ones. She has hitherto had a certain kind of a garment for christening, for marrying, for burying, for working and for dancing. Let her put aside these appropriate and characteristic garments, and she will produce but a hideous caricature of the prevailing fashions. You have, all of you, for example, noticed some brown-faced bohemian woman on our streets. About her round, comely face will be a kerchief of orange dud purple. Her purple skirt had crimson waist, her shawl of wonderful weave and many colors, her stone ankles with their purple stockings, her strong-shoes, and her awkward but splendidly powerful stride, make her a remarkable figure. Her clothing is appropriate. It is harmonious to herself. She and the clothes are in accord, and she makes a pleasant sight to the eye. But wait a few weeks. She will have observed, and she will have visited the bargain stores. And what is the result? Shoes which have destroyed the strength of her old gait, without giving her any of the grace of movement which the women possess whom she would faith imitate, a hat of many colors, which will not stay on straight, and which perches above her smoothly braided hair in a ridiculous fashion; an ill-fitting cloak which she does not know how to wear; and absurdly made dress which draggles in the dirt. From being a peculiar but appropriately dressed woman, she has become a guy and a stoven. She has, in short, emerged from the comforts of semi civilization into the discomforts of civilization, without acquiring any of the style which is the mitigating circumstance of fashionable dressing.
Women have grown a tride suspicious of those who talk to them about dress reform, because of the experiences that we have had in our attempts at wearing reformed clothes. First, there was the deeply respected Amelia Bloomer, who gave us a convenient, comfortable, hygienic, and utterly hideous costume which suggested badly made underclothes and which was worn by a few women with more moral courage than esthecism for a few mouths or years and then discarded. Later on came the efforts of the esthetes, and we of the present generation tried sad green draperies embroidered with conventionalized and tried to think we did not look untidy. But we know that we did. We working women have nothing to do with Greek draperies, and anyone who offers them to us is a fool. We cannot sweep, iron, wash, write, sew, wait at the dry goods counter, use the typewriter, carry the babies and canvass for books in Greek draperies. Moreover, we will not try Draperies are pretty things to lecture in, and to give physical exercises in, or to wear when we are playing the violin to a perfumed audience. But the Greek gown is an ideal thing for our most elegant hours, and is no more a part of this bustling, energetic, relentless age than is the Koman toga. And heaven knows what the business man of today would do in a toga. Therefore I advise you whenever the dress reform lecturer begins to tell you to wear Greek draperies, to leave her to the mellow flow of her own ideas, and hurry off about your business. Such talk may earn a living for the lecturer, but it will never be of any use to you I am morally sure that if I went through one of my hurried days in Greek draperies that before night they would be fluttering about me in sheds like a battleflag after an engagement.
No, for work and for play, we must have tidy, convenient, trim clothes, which will not get in our way, which will become us and which are fashionable. One of the choicest remarks of the dress reform lecturer is to advise one net to wear fashionable clothes. The reason she gives is that it entails much expense, is apt to be unbecoming, and is often injurious to the health, and disfiguring to the body. These are good reasons, and we might profoundly respect them if we were not morally certain that as soon as the lecturer got well out of sight of the audience to which she has been given such advice, that she will, herself, don a garment of the most fashionable make. I am not going to tell you not to dress in the fashion because I do not believe in wasting energy. I know, whatever I may say, that you will dress just as fashioably as you know how. and as your purse will permit. And, therefore. I shall say nothing against-it and especially, as I dress just as fashionably as I can myself. I would very much rather spend the time this evening you how to dress appropriately . The Parisian is the best dressed woman in the world-unless-it is the New Yorker-for the reason that she knows how to dress appropriately. The trouble with almost all young girls is unless they have mothers who exercise a great deal of firmness, that they try to dress too well. That is to say, they wear finery. Now, there are only a few places where one may appropriately wear finery. And if you are not in the way of going to such places, then do not spend your money on it. If you do not go to the parties, balls, dinners and afternoon receptions, do not buy such materials such colors as you would naturally wear at such places, and which are at only for such places. Do not pretend to be anything but what you are. One does not succeed by pretending, but by being exceedingly honest in regard to one's self. If your purse is limited, then waste none of its precious contents in purchasing cheap finery which will show its cheapness, and mark you as cheap, too.
Never get a cheap silk when you can buy a good cashmere with the same money. A plain material, honest of its kind is always preferable to a pretentious material which is dishonest of its kind.
Is stocking up one's wardrobe, one should begin with the necessities first. Get your neat home dresses, your tidy and service street dresses, your dress for church, the theater, or evening wear at your friends' homes; then after that, if you can afford to get any finery, or have any call to wear finery, why, buy it, that is to say, if by doing so you do not neglect any duty to others, or to yourself. A large part of the money spent for gowns is put in trimming. And it is a safe proposition that in nine cases out of the trimming hurts a gown more than it helps it. Dressmakers, however good in taste naturally. are apt to become enamored of their fashion book, and they study the plates they see in them, rather than the women who come to them to be dressed. For example, a short time ago someone conceived the unhappy ties of running ruffles or bands of silk around the skirt at equal intervals, thus slicing the body up into three or four sections. The effect was as bad as it possibly could be from an artistic point of view, and the woman who wore a skirt trimmed in the fashion could not look picturesque, no matter how graceful she might naturally be, or how much she paid for her clothes Women with an instict for good dressing very soon perceived this and are discarding the fashion as one which has no elements of beauty. As one uses discrimination in every other act of life, so one must use discrimination in every other act of life, so one must use discrimination in fashions. in telling you to be as fashionable as possible, I am only incaning to be honest with you. It goes without saying that women will try to be stylish. If they can only discover what is good style and what is bad, and will have the distinction to choose the good all will be well. I say the distinction, for it does indeed take a person of some personal pride and sureness of herself to be able to reject as unworthy of her a fashion over, which the rest of the world is going wild. But the lady will not wear anything grotesque, or immodest or out of keeping, no matter how fashionable it may be. She will only be fashionable so long as it is in keeping with dignity and propriety.
Economy sometimes takes bad forms. I have known women to let their tins, overtrimmed gowns, as they became shabby degenerate into morning dresses. And arrayed in this solled finery they would drag about their work, untidy and repusive in appearance. I have known girls to wear out their white party slippers and the light silk stockings doing up the housework in the morning. There is no economy in such proceedings. Life is so short that we cannot afford to waste any of it in looking slovenly. The true economy is to wear work clothes in working hours. if you are doing housework, come down to your work in the morning in a neat gingham, with your hair carefully combed, an apron out and a collar. Please wear a collar or some equivalent for it. There is nothing so freshens up the face as a bit of white about the neck. Do not, under any circumstances, wear curl papers or any other disfiguring thing about your head. There is no excuse for it. it is an insult to the miracle of God's new day to appear with the head disfigured. I honestly think that a wife who appears in curl papers has no right to complain if her husband makes love to another woman. Romeo would have revolted at the sight of curl papers. And it may be added that they seem quite as bad at night as in the daytime. A woman has no business to look ridiculous at any hour of the day or night.
But all this is, perhaps, wide of the subject. To return to working dresses. If your work is of the sort that brings you down town. let your business dress be severe-severe is not too strong a word to use. Wear some becoming, but dark color, black, blue, brown or gray. Do not waste money on trimming. It will only detract from the tidiness of the gown, catch the dust and be a nuisance from its need of repair. Let your dress be good fitting, keep it well brushed it, do it with a flower or a bit of ribbon, not with the trimming. Let your street hat be as severe as your dress One occasionally sees young girls wearing light, meuh trimmed hats to their work. These have probably been their theater hats which have become soiled, and are being worn out. But such economy is indeed mistaken. Do not wear out your finery at your work. better wear a 50 cent sailor hat at your work than a soiled theater hat.
If you are not very sure of your taste, and if you have not a genuine talent for combining colors, you will find it much the safer way. in planning a street costume. to have every article of one color. If hat, wrap, dress and gloves are of one quiet tint, any girl will present an attractive appearance; whereas, if one ventures on contrasts, she may make a distressing error if your means are such that you can seldom buy new wrap, it is best to decide upon the color that is most becoming to you, and adhere to it, more or less, season in and season out You think this would not be pleasant? Think it over a moment. Almost all of us look better in one color than in any other. For example, there is a lovely lady in this town, a dear friend of mine, who has a beautiful red brown hair. Her eyes are red-brown too. Her complexion is very delicate She looks very much better in red-brown than any other other color. When she wears that she becomes a sort of symphony. And she is so well aware of the fact that in one shade and another she wears red-brown year in and year out, and has come to be known to her friends by that wonderful hue. She has one of the most hormonious personalities imaginable, and is so pictoresque that she always arrests a stranger's eye. So I really think, that for usual wear it is well to choose one of the staple colors, if I may so term them, and in this way it is not necessary to get a new costume throughout every time a fresh gown is purchasedm but the gloves and hat left over from the old costume will do to wear with the new one, and the harmony will be preserved and the money saved.
It is always hard to advise young women to save in the matter of shoes and gloves. Shoes and gloves cost one more than one's dresses One does like to have a shoes that fits perfectly and looks well, and a glove that harmonizes with her gown, and which is not soiled. No incongruity is more offensive than a fresh face of a woman and a soiled glove. When one's purse is narrow it becomes necessary to exercise caution in buying gloves, not alone because of the difference in their durability, but also because of the great difference in their capacity for keeping clean. The undressed mousquetaire tan colored glove is the most artistic glove ever made. Perhaps it is the only really artistic glove worn to day. But it becomes soiled the first time that one wears it. If one has a half dozen pairs, and can have them cleaned as they become soiled, it is very well. But if one is limited to one, or at most, two pairs of gloves, it is very certain that they will not be kept clean. A woman's hand is a sweet thing. It appeals to the imagination And no woman who appreciates it will degrade it by putting it in a dirty glove if she an help it. I admit that it takes a great deal of energy. as well as some money to keep one's toilet in constant repair. But it takes energy to enable one to succeed in anything. It takes energy, for example to keep the buttons sewed on your shoes. The woman who does not sew the buttons on her shoes is fit for crimes against domestic comfort too distressing to even mention.
By dressing simply, by getting rid of the idea that one looks better in finery than in plain clothes, one can afford to have the underclothing in a attractive condition. I have seen women undress who reminded me of whited sopuichers, so fair were they without and so unslightly underneath. In the purchasing of gowns. it requires discrimipation, You will do much better to buy good cloth and make your underclothes than to buy it ready made. The cloth in ready made underclothing is almost invariably poor. and comes much trimmed to make it attractive. have your under garments fit you. Have them well made. Trim them appropriately, and have plenty of them. Do not wear any garments that cannot be frequently washed. And please do not imagine that, because some garments chances to be dark in color that it does not deed to be washed just as often as if it were white. Forgive me for saying these things. Perhaps they are superficious. As to the comparative durability of ready-made and home-made clothing. The ready-made will war about eighteen months, while the home-made will usually wear two years and a half. May I also beg you to be very very sure there are no wrinkles in your stockings, and that your petticoats are short, so that if it is muddy they will not become softed, and that you will keep fresh braid on the bottoms of your dress skirts. It takes time and hard work, but it is worth while. Besides, why not work hard? Nothing worth getting was ever attained without it.
There is one great economy I wish to speak to you about before we leave this subject of underclothing. And that is, to economize the body God has given you. Whatever else you do, do not waste his strength by abusing it. Do not draw it out of its fair shape with torture vests of steel. In other words do not lace your corsets. I heard the other day of a woman whose bust measure was thirty-eight inches and her waist measure twenty. I can only say that she came under the category of a criminal. She has injured her body And to injure the body is a crime. IF she ever has a child, it will be fairly safe to predict that he will have a tendency toward consumption, or, in some other way, show a fatal weakness Woman was given the sacred mission of bearing children. And while she may at times try to forget this, she cannot escape from her destiny. Her responsibilities are with her. She is accountable to God. If she puts upon the world children whom through deliberate fault of her own, are puny in body or in mind her punishment will surely come, and it is very apt to come right here on Earth. If a mother could have a worse torture than to watch a child dying a disease bequeathed it by her own folly. I do not know what it is. And I firmly believe that the woman who "faces" lays herself liable to encounter such a sorrow and such remorse.
See that your waist measures from twenty-four to twenty-eight inches. That is as nature intended at the least. Never ind the false measurements to which your eyes have become accustomed. Besides, it the proportions are right, you will not be conscious of anything out of the usual. Give yourself room to breath and you will and that you can work without fatigue. that you will be much more cheerful and that you have a concsious pleasure in activity, and unarticulaity in walking.
(Following this came and the detailed description of a neat and inexpensive summer outfitk such as could be afforded by almost any young girl.)
Economize the time you spend thinking about your clothes. Do not waste your time dreaming about them, or planning about them, or talking about them, any more than necessary. There is very much more need for economizing in the time spent in taling and thinking about clothes than in economizing the money spent on them. When you must get some new things make up your mind what you want, buy them, pay for them, make them or have them made, and do it as quickly as you can and with as little thought as may be. The subject is all imporant one. It matters how you look. Dress and address they say, are the things by which one stranger must estimate another. I believe that God would not have so decorated the earth and the sky, if he had not meant us to imitate them. We are to use beautiful forms, beautiful colors, perfumes and fine fabrics, to have changes and decorations, just as he has shown us. The body is a sacred temple, and it is but right that it should be decorated. But do it and then forget it.
There are two bad classes of shoppers. One class dreads the work, puts it off, frets about it, and does it poorly and reluctantly; and other class goes to it with avidity, haunts the counters saks for samples, broods over them, calls in her friends to consult with her, and makes her purchases as if life and death depended upon them. Both of these classes are deplorable. Shopping is pleasant if one has money to pay for wist due needs, and it ought to be done very quickly. Indeed, I cannot see how women of intelligence manage to take so long about it. Fifteen minutes ought to suffice for the purchase of any gown.
Then do, please, consider what you are like in buying your clothes. Take your personality into consideration. If you have a sallow complexion do not buy a gray gown. If you are thin and tall, do not dress in stripes. Never, whatever you are, dress in plaids, No one but a child should wear plaids. If your face is florid, do not wear red or bright blue. If you are fleshy do not shorten your appearance with a much trimmed waist. But on the other hand if you have a lithe, long body; do not try to slice it up. Make the most of your good points.
So many make the mistake of trying to mitigate any distinguising feature, What I mean is, if you are tall and slender, do not try to make yourself seem less so. On the contrary, make the most of it by wearing gowns which will show your gracefulness of structure. If you have eyes, hair and complextion which are in harmony, do not try to find gowns whichare in contrast so much as those which are in sympathy.
Give dress its due importance in your lives-no more and no less. It seems to me the woman with well-rounded mind will make dress a part of her life, naturally and simply without fret or fume, without excess or prodigality. She will learn to subordinate her clothes to herself. Her personality will always dominate her apparel, even while it expresses itself by means of it. You can tell a lady by her dress. And you an also tell a cultured woman by her absence of self-conciousness in regard to dress. The silly female top with her extreme and senseless fashions, it even more objectionable than the slovenly woman with holes in the fingers of her gloves, and dragging skirts and ill fitting waist; but both are repulsive, unwomanly and a mistake. Daintless seems an essential part of a woman, to me. But daintless has nothing to do with foppery. The trivial mind confesses itself in its elaborate and vain apparel. The abstracted, careless mind shows itself in ill-sorted, poorly-made and unbeautiful garments. The careless mind may be noble and often is, but the noble and intellectual woman who does not look after her dress does herself a great injustice and lessons her influence. And the top, fortunately, shows just what she is.
Buy what best suits your purse and tastes. Have it free from nervous, irritating trimming. Do not let it look as if a woman had worn her eyes or her back as if a woman had worn her eyes or her back out on it. And then, once having got it on, act as if you did not know there was such a thing in the world as clothes. If you can learn to do this you will have acquired the secret of repose.
Throw away your solid fluery. Have the courage to burn the ribbon, the feather, the gloves, and the lace you cannot clean. Never wear finery to your work. Never wear finery to your work. Never buy finery until you have got everything you need, and only then if you do not need a new book, or something of equal importance. Keep your buttons on, your dress binding whole, your gloves mended and your clothes in general repair. See that such trifling and inexpensive adjuucts to your toilet as veils, handkerchiefs, neck rushing etc. are always perfectly fresh. And always err, if you err at all, on the side of overplainness la dress.
If you can remember these things and apply them, you will have learned how to dress with taste and with economy.
Elia W. Peattie.
CUT OFF HIS TAIL.
At Madras, some time ago, a valuable lion, having incautiously allowed his tail to stray into an adjoining cage, the tail was seized by an evil dipused leopard, close to the lion's body, when, as the lion attempted to escape. almost the whole of the skin of his tail was stripped off. This was followed by such an amount of inflammation that the lion's life was in danger. Surgeon Major Miller, brother of the late Prf. Miller of Edinburgh, the surgeon to the governor of Madras, volunteered to perform amputation. The lion was seized in his cage and his head covered with a cap containing a considerable quantity of chloroform. He was then dragged to the edge of the cage and the tail passed through the bars, where Dr. Miller cleverly performed his operation. The animal made a good recovery.
QUARANINE.
French Journalism are criticising the attitude of United States delegates to the sanitary convention at Paris. The Americans have opposed every measure tending to make quarantine less rigid, Their object is to make the regulations so close that quarantine measures an be need to restrict immigration.
NAPOLEAN'S BOOK.
A collection of books from Napoleon's library at St. Helens, once the property of Jerome Bonaparte, sold at a very low figure recently at a Londom auction.
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