The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1869-03-31

From the New York Times.

1t is notorious fact that we get all
our fashions as we'll as many of our
vices from the barbarinns and the
burbarOus ages. We have nearly ex-
terminated the Indian race, but we
have university adopted their bad use
of tobacco. The vulgar looking CHG
non, perched dlsGustiDgly high on the
back of the head and heating the brain.
until one wonders that the ladies have
any sense left them, is borrowed, so Du
Chaillu assures us, from the blacka-
mOOrs of Africa. False hair and hair
of an unnatural color are but repeti-
lions of the Vanities of Queen Elizabeth,
w no. if not percisely barbnrous, was de.
cldedly ugly.-a fault fully as Ohjectio-
nable in any lady. In short, our new
customs are old. Slightly altering, a
crusty old bachelor might still claim,
with Shakespeare's surly and honest
country lord in the play,
"Old customs,
Though they be never SO ridiculous,
Nay "a 1t them be "n'00m"nly' yet are follow
The young ladies seem determined
to return to the abominable use of the
court-plaster patches, or "beauty
Spots" with which their mothers use
to distiyure their faces twenty or
twenty-five years ago. ~ promenade
of Broadway any pleasant afternoon
reveals these blemishes of beauty in
great prOfusiOn. The desired effect OF
contrast between the complexion and
the patch is not 81 striking one, and is
wholly lost on the majority ofmen who
have eyes for features rather than for
complications, and who, as n rule, do
not prefer pallor to ruddiness. The
ladies do not know from what class of
fashionables or age of the world this
fashion is descended to them, nor
what greater blemish resulting from
IA Ii ,;rl, A. AnI,
was originally intended to conceal, or
else they would abandon its use at
once. We do not very we'll know how
to tell them in plain language why it
was first used, but perhaps their ply
sicians may. Patches are among the
few fashions in vogue at this time. at
the display of which men grow dis
gusted AS we'll as satirical. To those
who are determined TO continue the
abominable practice, we extend, with
heartfelt commiseration, the advice of
the old satirist of the age, when disease
originated the fashion OF patching.
Said this satiricNl monster to lady ::
az own that patching S requisite for you,
For more we'rc pleased the less your face we
Yet advise, since my adv.cs you ask.
Wear b?i que patch, and be that patch-n
mask"
Can anything more senseless, incon-
venient, uncomfortable and uu4hapelV,
everything in fact but unfashiona BILE.
he imagined than the present style Of
heels to ladies' shoes. French heelS'
they are called, we believe, probably
because il is common TO believe that the
fashions come to US from France, when
in reality they come UiG Germany from
the remote dark ages. These heels have
four formidable objections. They are
high-too high by two inches they are
curved; they narrow from the shoe
down until q point no larger than the
button of a billiard cue touches the
ground: and though fastened at one
end of the shoe, tho curve brings the
point to the ground almost under the
insteD. The narrow sole is stif1ened TO
retain certain arched shape, no matter
how flat the foot may be, aud nature,
not the leather, must bend,-the foot
is set to the shoe, not the shoe
TO the foot. They are naturally
prolific of bunions and corns, and
worse still, they produce in walking
that most ungraceful of all attitudes
the "Grecian bend" We have seen
numerous letters from ladies. who con-
TESS that when frs: attempting to wear
shoes with such heels they could not
stand alone. They are as difficult TO
learn as the veloclpede. Ladies have
frequently to practice on them for sew
eral days before venturing on the
streets: and then it is only to be smiled
at for the queer figures they cut. The
folly of the use of such a shoe for walk
ing is apparent to all-except the fash
ionable wearers, who will be better
able, perhaps, to appreciate the ridicu-
lousness of their position when we in
form them that shoes of this pattern
and heel were designed solely for the
fair equestrians of the French Court,
and that no one of them ever thinks of
attempting to walk in them. How
would the fair Metternich and the EN-
press sigh to think that the aristocratic
fashion they stole from their ancestors
of the age of Louis Nv. are being put
to a plebeian land foolish) use by the
foolish land plebeian?) ladies of Amer
icaI
THE FLOWER OF THE FIELD.-wheat.