Mineral Point weekly tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1859-1868, 1864-01-06

C. Z.
your devotion to the dressing and bedizening
| OF your persons, degraded yourselves pitiful-
| " The whole number of fashionable female
| souls are but slaves to the fading bodies in
which they live. When I look in upon a
fashionable watering place and see how dre-s
and personal adornment absolutely monepo-
lac the time and the thought Of the fash
| Ionaole women assembled there-wher | wit
| ness the rivalry among them-the attempt to
outshine each other in diamonds and all the
tributaries to costly dress-when | see their
je&lousies and hear their iu-natured criti-
| cisms of each other, and then realize that
these women are mothers and those Of whom
I mothers will be made, | have opened to me
a gulf of barbarous selfshness-a scene of
gilded Ineauness and misery-from which /
shrink back heart-sick and disguised Good
! Heaven, MADAM who and what are you p
Are you all body and no soul ? Is it decent
business for a decent soul TO be constantly
| overwhelmingly occupied-in orna-
menting and showing off for the qualification
| of personal vanity the body it inhabits? Do
you realize how low you have fallen? Do
you realize that you are come 10 the small
and indecent business of getting up YOU per-
son to be looked at, admired, praised,-tha
| the most grateful satisfactions of your life
found IN this business and that the business
| itself Is but single moral remove from pros
titution
If | hare succeeded in picturing you TO
! YOURSELF perhaps you will be prepared 70 fol-
| low me into a contemplation of a few of the
natural consequences of your infatuation up
| on your character and happiness VIII YOU
/ look among your fashionable female acquain-
tances, and find one who is making any intel
lectual progress The thing is impossible
| There Is nothing more conducive to mental
| growth and development in devotion to the
keeping and dressing of the person of NO
| man. than theresis in the keeping and the
| grooming and Harvesting of pet horse Look
| at a man who devotes himself to horse. He
may be q very pleasant fellow, and ordinarily
intelligent, Lut if he is enamored of his ami
nal, and gives himself up to his care and ex-
hibition, becoming what is known as " horse
| man." that ends his intellectual development.
| When horse gets highest III any mans mind,
| culture ceases Now, madam, it would make
no difference, practically, whether you were
| devoted TO the person of horse, or the per-
| sol Of pet dog, or the person of Mrs. Royal
| Purple Jones. The mind that engages in no
| higher business, or that finds its highest de-
| light IN no higher pursuit than that of groom
| ing and displaying a beautiful body can make
/ no progress into nObler life. Practically
| YOU sill find this the case everywhere. You
/ Will find that your fashionable friends do not
| grow at ALL They move along in the same
! old rUts pirate Of the same old vanities, 90
the same old rounds of frivolity, and only
become less sprightly and agreeable as the
wears pass by. just what you see in these
people, madam, l see in YOU.
| There Is another very sad result which
/ comes naturally from this devotion to your
own person. You are already grown su-
premeIy selfish. You have permitted your
personal vanity to control you so long that
/ YOU can really see nothing in the universe
| but Yourself 1t seems proper and right that
/ everybody should serve you. Any labor that
would soil or enlarge YOUR small, white hands
/ any toll that would tax the powers of your
pettcd body-anv service for others that
| would draw YOU away from service to your
/ own PERSONS stunned. Your mother, your
sister, your friends, are all laid under tribute
I To you, and your petulance under denial has
made them your slaves. Absorbed by these
thoughts Of Yourself devoted 10 nothing but
Yourself, making room for no plans which do
not relate to yourself, YOU have come to re-
gard yourself as the worlds pivotal centre.
Il does not occur 10 YOU at all that the kind
people around you can have any interests or
plans Of their own TO look after. All The fish
must come to your net or you are unhappy;
/ and Ii hog around you are not made unhap-
/ py 1t n not because you do not try to make
/ them so. Sometimes you act like a msera-
/ bic, spoiled baby, and then, under the spur
! of ealou=y YOU act like an infatuated brute
natural and irresistible, in all who devote
themselves, IS you have done, to the care
and exhibition of their persons. Others NAV
cover II from sight more than you do, by
more cunning art, but il is there. 1t cannot
be otherwise, and l cannot conceive of a
type OF selhshness more n--rly perfect than
that which the character of almost any fash
iouabie woman Illustrates.
There is still another resuld which natural
Irr % f,--- a. Il.
viz: yulrarity Madam, | look anywhere in
Gods world for genuine refinement and lady
like instincts and manners rather than to
fashionable society. True refinement and
gentle manners can never find their home
in any society where selfshness reigns. True
refinement has brains. True refinement has
a heart. True refinement always makes room
in the world for others. True refinement
does not find its satisfaction in the display and
adornmcnt of the body. True refinement re-
fuses to be governed by fashion, having with
in itself higher and purer law. True refine
ment shrIukS from conspicuity and show.
True refinement engages in no unworthy and
unwomanly rivalries You know that the
coarsest words you ever hear from the lips of
women-tHe haTshest, meanest, worst things
the lowest expressions-you hear from the
lips of those of your own set. Yet mark the
impudeut hypocrisy of the thing. You and
your set assume to be the leaders of society
the tOn-the pattern women of a nation
so far refined that all other women are count
ed vulgar Ny friend, Of YOU are not bv
this time become my enemy how can you
help becoming vulgar when YOU have been
nothing for years but your own groom How
can YOU help becoming low when YOU have
thought of nothing for years but your own
persona You are vulgar. All your pursuits
are vulgar Your rivals and associates are
vulgar, and your ambitions are as vulgar as
those of h0rsej jockey.
l would not be misunderstood. | admire
Well dressed woman. | admire a beautiful
woman, and l thoroughly approve all Iegiti-
mate efforts to render the person both of man
and woman agreeable. Men and women owe
il TO their own dignity to drape their persons
becomingly and well, and they can do this
without acquiring an absorbing passion for
dress, or giving any more than the necessary
amount Of time and thought to it, The fact
il that a woman who Is what q woman should
bc has no need of elaborate perpetual orna-
mcut 10 make her attractive. \ pure true
heart, "a seEforgetful spirit, an innocent De
light in innocent society, wish and an ef-
fort TO please, ready ministry TO the wants of
nj hers Irra,,ta fi aaa.f1s,Iis bueapts