Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1870-01-25
Female Extravaganza in Dress.

complain OF the fact that thc imnort duty on
articles of female dress exceeded ten millions
of dollars in the last fiscal year. As an off
set. however. to this account against our wo-
men, our men must be debted with the duty
on tobacco, wines and other spirituous liquors,
amounting to something, but not great deal,
less. Taking the two statements together,
and bringing ourselves face to face with the
inevitable. we may conclude that until the
millennium. and despite ''the foolishness of
preaching" and sumptuary laws. men will
drink and women will dress. But let us not
therefore desPond Let US rather range our
selves with that class of healthy philosophers,
who insist upon looking at the comfortable as
pect of human affairs, and refuse to give up
the divine in our nature. because the world,
the flesh. and the devil still claim so large a
portion in the annual receipts of u high pro-
tective tariff.
In the matter of Female Extravaganza in
dress our consolatory reflections may be
classified under the following heads:
l. Hon'an rs SoUereign an the AEsHteticdl
Department of our Social Economy.
No one will deny that the great tendency
of the age is toward rationalism. We in
danger of trending out beneath our huge New
England feer not only the morning dewdrops
of finer sentiment, bur the very flowers of
on which they hang 1t is necessary to pre-
serve somewhere a love of the fine arts. A
worship of the Beautiful must be somewhere
f0stared. A sweet anti-utilitariansm must
remain, ''reUOc0re eel hominem .jUnyere Dec. ="
as Cicero expresses it to reclaim men and
unite them to God Nav we maintain that
this sweet HSthetic principle belongs natural
ly and pre-eminently to women. who are
"thrice as magnetic to ali sweet influences of
earth or heaven" They are the repositories
of genuine love of the I5eautiful as of lost
art. They lrW weave about them all manner
of pretty fancies. Hats. ribbons. flowers. hon.
nets-aIl these mean something more than
straw and fibre. They mean divinity
C0eridgc. always profound in his thenphrares,
declared that We owed much of our modern
civilization to that principle in the female ma
ture which expressed itself by ornamenting
the rersnn.
Julia Brace born some half century ago in
Connecticut. under the aImose incOmPrehenSi-
BILE misfortune of being deaf. dumb. and blind.
discovers two remarkable inclinatnus. Moth,
ing so much pleases her as presents pertain
ing to her dress. aud she distinguishes the
finer textures which she greatly prefers. by
the touch secondly, as we are still more
beautifully told:
We SeulhI ll'hhFHbCS WI "i'''S ""NN W.
lone heart to glndness-and she gathers the
first flowers and even the Young blades of
grass and inhales their freshness with de-
light bordering on transport"
Poor Julia furnishes us an opportunity to
study the intuitinns of woman. Her mind.
prisoned with more than the ordinary human
bands communes first and most freely with
the beautiful. Though blind. she wraps
about her person captivating colOrS though
mute. she converscs with the roses. dumb. yet
eloquent. as herself This love of the Ese-
less. which NJ MediOcrity can not comprehend is
always supreme in the breast of Woman
We do not know any dvincr use to which our
money can he put than to encourage it. More
especially when we remember that there is
c0rrelative principle in the breast of men
equally worthy of encouragement. Their own
dress is founded on Utility. They dress as
their labor requires. An engine driver should
not have white kid gloves. An apron of
leather is appropriate TO the smith, whether
white or black. The farmland will hardly
find use for a velvet hunting suit. These are
the Vulcans. who forge weapons for the gods.
But their wives and daughters they must
and shall have something to wear. Venus
must have her Zone-the Golden Maidens
must have ornnments-ot Vulcan cannot work.
Thus, deeply imbedded in the nature OF Man,
springing out of and corresponding to the love
Of the Beautiful in Woman. is an intuition
which points to her as the embodiment of
some retinemCnt-SOme beauty-SOme purity,
to which he can not attain.
We believe that both Of these correlative
sentiments or intuitions should be encouraged.
More especiaIly.at this time, when effort is
being made to virIize the softer sex, and
eradicate all of those distinctions which have
thus far preserved the race. Let US foster
feminiuity in woman. and condemn senillty III
man. Let our darines dress.
H. HDdrd5nq, and Nom production, are the
two great evils which we have to encounter
in political economy. The man who gives up
wealth, or its representative. TO his Golfers, to
this extent, Injuries the State. The miser
violates the spirit of the old law against mort
main The loaier is an impost. The idIer Is
a tax on the producer. 1t is impossible he
can live without labor, and as he expends
none, he must live on that ofo others. Opposed
to the hoard er and non producer, are the buyer
and the laborcr. These last are Datural allies
aud friends. Let our women dress rich as
Cuut richer than) their purses can afford
Every silk they buy rebounds to the benefit
OF the laborer. If Flora McFlmsy did not
buy. then Jennie Sempstrcss. would stnrve, or
do worse. for want of employment. In other
words, as society is at present constituted, 1t
seems to us that if every belle should suddenly
become u consistent Quakeress. and torbear
to buy any handsome acticle OF dress, the
revenue would greatly fall off; /; and, far worse
than this. many thousand honest laborIng men
and women would find their occupations gone.
Gauut Famine would somewhere celebrate,
with hi, own lean orgies, the moral retorma-
tion Of Flora McFlmsy.
We console ourselves therefore, with. the
reflection that the sum which we pay for silks,
and the duty thereon, are not lost. Some
body will live longer thereby. Julia Brace
will be the happier Our sweet female types
of the beautiful will be ornamented, and