New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-06-09
THAT MILLINERY IN COURT.

iZng trials. There il foundation Tor the re-
proach When we think not merely what
is likely to be said by the witnesses, but OF
what is likely to be said by the lawyers, 1T
certainly seems desirable to suppress good
deal of the proceedings in court, before they
GO freely into young ladies' boarding schools.
But if the msdeeds of man are thus to be
kept from the eyes of woman, shall those OF
woman be revealed without shrinking before
the eyes of man Such is the Boston theory,
and The Daily Adrertiser itself gave three
solid columns to the trial of the fashionable
dressmaker, Mrs. Olivia p. Flynt, for over
charging, wherein we have already been
moved to dolOrous comment. Yet The Ddty
Advertiser goes into families. 1t is read in
colleges 1t is openly exposed for sale at
Cambridge. You can buy it on Sundays, In
Boston, though you cannot get into the public
library. 1t is impossible to count the num-
Der of inexperienced young men who may
have read those three columns since their
publication.
"The ingenious student" as Charles Sumner
used grandly to say, remains ingenious, II
that means innocent and unsuspecting, no
more. Before his graduation, he has read Mrs,
Flynt's testimony about graduated ruches."
He has learned about pinking in five rows,
and the bloom of his mind is partly rubbed Off
in consequences Once he thought that women
were all angels. Now he learns the name and
price and pattern of every feather in the
celestial pnmage. Once he thought of her as
a rose mid roses. Now he has CHASTITY visions
of "Item nv which is "a tea-rose silk, very
"superior, OF a sublime quality" so that two
yards of it cost thirty dollars. How his con-
science begins to haunt him in respect to yes
terCay's Irritation. Did he really say, like Mrs.
Nickleby's lover, "Gos and Magogl BE mine
" be mine!n to creature so cosilyf He asks
himself reproachfully, as Mr.. Weller, senior,
asks his son, "Wos L tallIin' to her about
"hearts and piercers, wos [, Sammy2" With
what anguish he thinks of the last valentine
he sent, in which he and Araminta walked
side by side to church, amid marching Cupids
and towering dovesl To be sure, the costume
of the Cupids could not have been expensive,
and suggests no painful thoughts; but forever,
amid his troubled sleep, those doves are pre-
senting their little bills.
And upon the tender mind of girlhOod, too,
what lasting impressions must nave been made
by this trial The I" mild and modest country
"girl,n who deemed it virtue to have turned
her old taratan once more for party dress,
and TO have retrimmed her last years Spring
hat at cost of seventy-fve cents, has her
eyes now opened to what is done in distant
and dangerous cities. She learns that Mrs. A.
l.. Coolidge's bill at her dressmaker's, appa-
rently for few months only, amounted to
1911 II and that this dressmaker reprOached
her customer by letter for the smallness of the
amount, and assured her that a rival customer,
Mrs. -- Oct us call her HaTis), had paid
her $4,000 in three months, and was likely this
year to exceed that Can these things be In
cities, and yet rural innocence remain unfair
nished7 Yet parents who would keep from
their daughters the details of a divorce suit
will let their virgin minds dwell unrestricted
on excuses that can only end in that proven
bal divorce which parts a fool from his
money. Free love is bad, but so is free mil
liners account. And though in this case it is
given in evidence that Mr.. Coolidge "found
ono fault with the robe,n and said his wife
chad not spent half so much money as he
wanted" yet these are cases where man is
weak. "Will you deny" says Michelet to
young husband, ga new dress to this sweet
woman, who lives but for your
1t must indeed be owned that the husband
may spend as much upon his own luxuries in
the shape of wine and cigars as the wife upon
her wardrobe Men and women both like to
appropriate money to their bodies; but men
prefer it inside and women outside The lat
ter is the more refined use, no doubt. Yet
there is certain satisfaction in the entire dis
appearance Of the money you put down your
throat 1t can never reappear in court, like
Mrs. Coolidge's "poplin suit to be denounced
as "soiled' by the too fastidious dressmaker
who made it. Wild oats, sOwn in discreet
places, do not assert themselves so formidably
as these memorable fringes and laces of Mrs.
Flynts. Nor did any judge ever morally ex-
hort any man under conviction for simple
drunkenness more feelingly than this fashion
able creditor in her letter, exhorts her fashion
able debtor:
How can you, Mrs Coolidge, gaze upon your own
econ In the mirror and derive the slightest satsfac-
ton from your adornments knowing that they not
paid fort Such change from the Mrs. A. L. Coolidge
OF former years cannot be- There must be terrible
Illusion"
Illusion lace ..t.
Yet after all this disclosure has at least
this merit, that we now know the worst.
Like a clergyman at a horse race, we have
seen sin. 1t might do good as n warning, if
warnings ever did any good. AT any rate it
will enable us TO comprehend even venerable
ladies like her of Illinois, who walked thirty
miles, the other day, at the age of seventy
two, to pay her taxes and buy her Spring
bonnet And il must furnish new argument