Extravagance of dress, and almost indecency of dress, has
taken the place of simple womanly beauty. Wordsworth once described the
"perfect woman nobly planned." Where will you find the perfect woman
now? Not in the parti-coloured, over-dressed creature--the thing of
shreds and patches--with false hair, false colour, false eyebrows,
false everything. "Some of nature's journeymen have made them, and not
made them well, they imitate humanity so abominably."
The evil does not stop with the moneyed classes. It descends to those
who have nothing but their salary to live upon. It descends to the wives
of clerks and shopmen. They, too, dress for respectability. They live
beyond their means. They must live in gimcrack suburban villas, and
"give parties." They must see what is going on at the theatres. Every
farthing is spent so soon as earned,--sometimes before. The husband does
not insure his life, and the wife runs into debt. If the man died
to-morrow, he would leave his wife and children paupers. The money he
ought to have saved during his life of toil, is spent on
"respectability;" and if he leaves a few pounds behind him, they are
usually spent in giving the thriftless husband a respectable funeral.
"Is that dress paid for?" asked a husband. "No." "Then you are allowing
yourself to be clothed at another man's expense!" No woman is justified
in running into debt for a dress, without her husband's knowledge and
consent.
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