The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1871-09-01

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now ii requires care enough to keep her
self together to save soul.
| L once saw a young lady ride tn,
whole way from Portland to Boston il
| the cars without once leaning bacE
against the cushioned seat, so thar
she should not tumble her black sill
sash.
\ barber told me that he ''curled q
young lady" once for ball; "and she
had tSCO hundred and fOrty-seren curls
when she was done. And | began al
ten o'clock in the morning, and never
got through with her till nine o'clock al
night ~
DIR. DiO Lewis tells of being who
put four hundred and twenty-five u
think yards of trimming upon one sim
gle dress.
"We get no Christ from yOu," said
Rumney Leigh. "And, verify, we shall
not get a poet, in my mind"
And, verify, when society had re-
duced women to such straits as this one
hardly understands such fact as Eliza
beth Barrett Browning.
-Four hundred and twenty-five yards /!
Conceive of the Hon. Charles Sumner
or Professor Longfellow in four hundred
and twenty-five yards of trimming
Imagine the speech on San Domingo, or
the Psalm of Life, written in Black
silk sask tied i'm snarl to the authors
coat-tails, he pausing at every classic
metaphor, or at the close of each mar
tial stanZa, to see if he had tumbled him
self behind.
Fancy Brown-Sequard at consulta-
ton in two hundred aud fOrty-seven
curls. Picture him timing the pulse of
a dying man with one hand and tight
ening his hairpins with the other.
1t is threadbare experiment Of out
ragged taste to fire broadsides of ridicule
at women's dress; but it is neither fair
play nor fair logic to do "only that and
nothing more" Women are what men
have made them. You had the first
chance, sir. "Ourhour is not yet come"
IL is quite as much your fault as ours
that you write epics while we hem
frills; and that YOU support the family
while we punch stilettO holes in piece
of cambric, or prick yards of muslin
into embroidered ''insertin',n to encir-
Gle our necks and arms withal.
From the time that girl-baby is put
into tiimsy muslin upper skirt, with
three frills and bow to it, and a boy
baby into a solid piece of blue flannel,
with n sailOr-cOllar and brass buttons,
to the day when Mary leaves school and
begins (alasi poor Mary y to ''dO her
own sewing" the girls mental force is
imperceptibly, insidiously, poisonously
draining away into the covering of her
poor, little, innocent, beautiful body.
BY that it is ''time for her to be mar
ried;" and then the last state of that
woman shall be worse than the first.
Men dress to please themselves.
Women dress to please men, \ mans
attire has regard TO his comfort, his
convenience, his means, his business,
his whereabouts, his health, his happi-
ness. y wOman's has regard to the
whims, the fancies, the weakness, the
admiratiOns and passions of fmen.
1t is surprising that il should be nee
essary to make the assertion that this is
neither natural nor q Christian state
of things; that it is perverted and Pa
gan; that, because we are used to it, we
are not, therefore, adapted to it; that
ii is as false as it is familiar, and as dan
gerOus.
If they were not the most obvious
truths which require the most demon
and the superfiuOus appliea-
tions which oftenest cry from neglect, it
would be mere impertinence to remind
the world at this stage of its history
that the greatest blunder it has ever
is the assumption that wOm-
an is made for man. But the world,
like the schoOl-boy, "knows perfectly
well-only forgets."
Under the blessed dispensatiOn of
Jesus Christ, Il man is just rs much the
helpmeet for the woman as the woman
is meet for and help to the man. Under
the dry and dusty Old-time Jewish pref
tt-lnf - 10 -
drought, that woman lOseth her life,
misses her purpose, fails of her final
cause, who does not study to make her
self useful and attractive to men; and
mark the inevitable cOrOllary-by the
very least elevating powers ofattractiOn
which she can exert or to which they
can respond.
| call them the least elevation. They
might well demand Il stronger term.
Run your eye over any "female" SEM
mary that you may chance upon, and
how often would you find a girl to
whom you would say that il has ever
occurred TO inquire why it is that she
should put ten rows of velvet in a "Gre- !
cian PATTERN on the bottom of dress, |
while her brother has his coat bound |
once with silk braid, and then calls |
il "gimp," and never knows the diff /
ference to his dying day. Why she /
wears four feathers, several yards of
ribbon, Il piece of lace, cambria flowers
and vail upon her straw hat 4; and he !
only a lute-string band pinned straight
arOnnd the crown? Why her hat tips
over her nose, and his stays on his
head? Why she is burdened with a
pink parasOl, and he goes handfree and
burned and happy? Why he may
i'll e.. II.
likes; and why she locks herself i'm her
room and cries when she discovers the /
tenth, upon the bridge of her nose ? /
Why he should wear comfortable. loose
coats, and she uneasy tight basques ? /
Why he in brOadclOth, she in transpar-
ent muslin? Why her pretty neck is
bare, his decently covered? Why she
pays four dollars for n lace collar, he
twenty-five cents for a linen? Why
she Is pinehed into cOrsets, and he is
not? Why his shirts are made into
plain bands, and every article other un-
lerdress is trimmed? Why her very
are reduced to a senseless,
useless mass of fine embroidery and
lacework, to which he would refuse the
llShlty of a mosquito netting? Why,
III snort, all the use of dress is his. the
tSS ners The sense his, the nonsense
hers? The beauty-I hesitate. Man i
not a graceful being; but in this cnIti-
waited year of our Lord, one thonsand
eight hundred and seventy-one. bis
very stove-pipe hat and sack coat viaId
the field to the unparalleled and 1nan-
preached and unapproachable deformitv
of women's attire. 4ni'y
1t takes more and worse than brains
to dress as women are expected tn ,Irees
1t takes morals. ~ vi VS.
That few pure-minded women krou