Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1871-08-11
THE DRC.sI' OF "It'O.H rvs
WIT"

that boys ana girls stand on equal terms al
school, and keep well together till the boy
starts for college, when marked separation
begins, forming an intellectual chasm new
or to be bridged. Accepting the statement
that "women's wit goes into their Clothes
this brilliant pen paints the picture with
touches like these:-
The average young man walks into his
taior's twice a year, pays bill, and has
coats, and pantaloons, and vests. He re.
quires shirts, and somebody makes him
shirts. He thinks no more. VIII he have
hat9 Behold! piece of felt with gal
loon string 1t does not flap over his fore
head 1t will never twitch of his back
hair. 1t does not blow into his eyes. 1t
will not be out of date before the summer
is over. 1t is fixed fact, like yesterdays
dinner or the last election.
The average young woman eXpends
enough inventive power, enough financial
shrewdness, enough close foresight, enough
perturbation of spirit, enough presence of
mind, enough patience of hope and anguish
of regret upon one seasons outfit had
almost said upon enc single street suite
make an excellent bank cashier, or "A COM
Portable graduate Of a theological semina-
ry.
If you doubt the truth of this statement,
Just take in for yourself, with the ''crickets
eye" the first young girl you meet down
town. How fearfully and wonderfully
made! How do you suppose those bias
folds, and double box plaits, and futed
rufiles, and corded bands, and shirred
waists, and paniered skirts, and bowed, and
| hounced, and tied, and corded, and laced,
and buttoned, and spangled, and fringed,
and folded. and dotted, and hunched and
bunched and horrible mysteries got to-
| gether?
There was manUuvering enough expend-
| ed upon the dressmaker TO have elected a
representative, and concentration of mind
upon the seamStress intense enough to have
withstood Wall street panic, and head
ache enough put into the sewing machine
to have mastered "Porter's Human Intel
lect."
| once saw young lady ride the whole
way from Portland to Boston in the cars,
without once leaning back against the cush-
toned seat so that she should not tumble
| her black silk sash.
A barber told me that he 'curlcd young
lady" once for a ball; land She had pa
curlS when she was done. And began at
10 O'Clock in the morning, and never got
through with her till o'clock at night"
DR.. bio Lewis tells of being who put
40 Il think yards of trimming upon one
single dress
-Four hundred and twenty-five yards!
Conceive of the Hon. Charles Summer OF
Professor Longiellow in 425 yards of trim
ming Imagine the speech on San Domin-
go, or the Psalm Of Life written in black
silk sash tied in snarl to the authors coat
tail, he pausing at every classic metaphor
or at the close of each martial stanza, to SET
if he had tumbled himself behind.
Fancy Brown Sequard at II consultation
in 2i7 curls. Picture him timing the pulse
of dying man with one hand and tighten
ing his hair-pins with the other.
1t is "a threadbare experiment of outraged
taste to fire broadsides at women's dress
but it is neither fair play nor fair logic tC
do "Only that and nothing more WomeI
are what men have made them. You hat
the first chance, sir. "Our hour is not We
come" 1t is quite as much your fault al
ours that you write epics while we hen
fills; and that you support the iamil,
while we punch stlctto holes in a piece o
cambria, or prizes yards of muslin into EN-
broidered "inscrtion," to enrich our neck
and arms withal.
From the time that girl-baby is put int
Il himsy muslin upper skirt, with tire
frills, and boy-baby into solid piece q
blue flannel, with sailors collar and bras
buttons, to the day when Mary leave
school and begins (alas! poor MaryD t
"do her own sewing" the girls menta
force is imperct ptibly, insidiously, poison
) ously draining away into the covering {
A her poor, little, innocent, beautiful body
4 BY that it is "time for her to be married
4 and then the last state Of that woman sha
G be worse than the first.
= Men dress to please themselves Wome
!, dress to please the men. A mans attire hi
r regard to his comfort, his convenience, h
means, his business, his whereabouts, h
o health, his happiness. woman has +,
}, gard to the whims, the fances, the veal
$ ness, the admiratlons, and the passions
d men.
Z Run your eyes over any "iemale" sem
d nary that you may chance upon, and 10
h often would you find girl to whom yc
v would say that it has ever occurred to il
;. quire why it is that she should put t.
rows Of velvet in a "Grecian pattern" {
D, the bottom of dress, while her brother Ia
" his coat bound once with a silk braid. WI