The Evansville journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ind.) 1866-1870, 1867-12-14
NEW YORK AND PARIS FASHIONS.
FOR DECEMBER.
New YORK, December. 1867.

NEW YORK, december, 1901.
There is a curious rage just now for
fashion, for gossip about fashions,
and gossip about fashionable people.
All the scraps Of information that can
be cleaned from any source whatever,
are eagerly caught at and retailed
with additions and exaggerations, not
only in the parlor and the boudOir,
but in the columns of the press Of
the country.
Women never guilty of an idea, de-
voured with ennwi but occupying a
certain social position, find them
selves all at once lifted into an i'm
portance of which they had not So
much as dreamed, their dress, habits
and entertainments made the subjects
Of court paragraphs, and yer the
colOrs of the horses which draw them,
and the Afghans which protect them
in their daily drives, made the texts
for outbursts of admiring Jenkin-
sonian observations.
This magnifying of society par &C.
ce7Ience, its accessories and surround
ings, does not come from the members
Of its interior circles; they become
too wearied Of It's monotony to find
in it material for lively or brilliant
descriptive. Fashionable news is,
therefore, principally done" by
hungry penny-a-liners, who never
hardly saw the interior Of a grand
drawing-room, and whose highly col
ored sketches of weddings, entertain
ments, receptions and Soirees are all
drawn from observations made at
street corners, through open windows
or dropped from the lips of chance
acqu~aintances. Well, this method of
treatment undoubtedly has its advan-
tageSEit leaves pretty much every
thing to the imagination of the writer,
who is SURE to do infinitely more than
justice to the facts. In his eyes all
brides are beautiful, all women young,
all diamonds real, all lace genuine
old Point" all that g%litters pure
gold, OF, at any rate, if they are not,
he strives to make every one else
think sol
1t is said that the most distinguish
ed fashion writer of Paris is an old
woman, who lives in an attic, smokes
a short pipe, wear a yellow bandana
round her head, and signs herself
Countess"
1t has also passed into a proverb,
that the most successful delineators
Of certain phases of joy or sorrow are
those who never experienced either
in the forms which they so eloquent
ly depict.
The daily life of wealthy people in
a large city is indeed, to a looker-on,
wonderfully inviting. 1t is a success
sion of feteS-one seemingly long and
never. ending holiday. The c~leanli,
ness of the streets in which they live
and where the sunshine loves to ling
er; the amplitude and conveniences
of their dwellings; the carriages. and
horses always at command the abun.
dant means for the qualification Of
taste, even the habitual wearing O.
costly clothes, all lend fascination tC
eyes forced to dwell mainly on the
narrow, the crude, and the unbeauti,
full, and quite close them to the pos
sibilities of WEAKNESS, torturing cares
anxieties, heartachiugs, and heart
b%urnings, starvation OF the heart IL
the midst of bodily plenty, and ever
non appreciation of the very goods
the possession of which is the cause
of so much envy. | know a lad.
whose magnificent equipage is thu
great trial of her life. She loves tt
walk, but is obliged to ride for thu
sake of exercising her horses, ant
being very timid IVA goes out with
out expecting every instant that al
accident will occur which will breal
her neck.
Another occupant Of a brown ston.
mansion. a born housekeeper, dar,
not enter her own kitchen, except t.
give an order, because it is the con
ceded territory of her imperious ser
-. anl nnt1,nllr lives in n stnta q