Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1871-08-16
4 Woman Problem Dress

\ Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, author oi
I. Gates Ajar' and other brilliant works, a
woman Of rare accomplishments, discusses
the dress question in the independent, in a
sufficiently racy manner to make 1t inter
estng. We make an extract;
The average young man walks into his
7 tailors twice a year, pays bill, and has
coats and pantaloons and vests. That j.
/ all he knows. He requires shirts, and
somebody makes him shirts He thinks
no more. viii he have a hat? Behold
a piece Of felt, with a galloon string. 1t
does not flop over his forehead 1t will
never twitch off his back hair. 1t does not
/ blow into his eyes It's elastics cannot
blister his neck, or produce depressions Of
\ the cerebcllum. 1t will not be out Of date
\ before the summer is over. seldom or never
matter Of anxious reflection. 1t IS a fix
ed fact like yesterdays dinner or the last
election.
The average young woman eXpends
enough inventive power, enough financial
/ shrewdness, enough close foresight, enough
presence of mind, enough patience of hope
and anguish of regret upon one seasons
outfit had almost said upon one single
street suit-to make an excellent bank
cashier or a comfortable graduate Of a
theological seminary.
If You doubt the truth Of this statement
Just take in for yourself, with the"cricket 5
/ eye" the first young girl you may meet
down town. How fearfully and wonder
fully made How do you suppose those
bias folds, and double box plaits, and fut-
ed ruffes, and corded bands, and shirred
waists, and paniered skirts, and bowed,
and founced, and tied, and corded, and la
ced, and buttoned and spangled, and frin-
ged, and folded, and dotted, and hunched,
and punched, and horrible mysteries got
together!
/ There was maneuvering enough expend-
\ ed upon the dressmaker to have elected a
representative, and concentration of mind
upon the seamstress intense enough to have
withstood a Wall street panic, and head
ache enough put into the sewing machine
to have mastered 3" Porter's Human Intel
4 lect' And now it requires care enough
to keep herself together to save a soul.
once saw a young lady ride the whole
way from Portland to Boston in the cars
without once leaning back against tne
y ClSutOhCd DOdb1 CO bh@S DAN oAAONAA HNN
tumble her black silk sash.
a barber told me that he "curled a
young lady" once for a ball "and she
had two hundred and forty-seven curls
when she was done, and [ began at ten
O'Clock in the morning, and [ never got
through with her till nine O'Clock at night!
Dr. Dio Lewis tells of a being who put
four hundred and twenty-five Il think
yards of trimming upon one single dress.
" We get no Christ from you, said Rom
ney Leigh. And, verify, we shall not
get poet, in my mind And, verify,
when society has reduced women to such
straits as this, one hardly understands such
fact as Elizabeth 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 sash tied in
snarI to the authors coat tai, he pauslng
at every classic metaphor, or at the close
of each martial stanza, to see if he had
tumbed himself behind. Fancy Brown