The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1876-06-01
The Spring Bonnet Question.

In the spring young mans fancy
lightly turns to thoughts of love, but in
the same season the consuming desire Of
the average woman is to obtain a satisfac-
tory bonnet. If women possessed the
privilege of suffrage, the constitutional
provision for a spring election would have
| been mistake. At that period of the
! year the questions involved In the selec-
ton of bonnet override and trample out
almost every other issue. Whether Turkey
is likely to be dismembered; whether
Bristow or Blaine shall be President;
whether specie payments shall be resumed
in 1879; whether the Mediterranean can
really be drained into the Sahara, these
and all similar matters, though they prom
Use natural or political commissions, are
forgotten when the spring bonnet looms
up as thing impending in the imme-
diate future.
The preliminary preparations for the
purchase are made, perhaps, in church,
where, while the ears of the average
woman are receiving the gospel truth, her
eyes are comparing the merits of the
various styles about her; in the horse car.
where every wearer of a striking bonnet,
for moment after entering, is the con
scious focus of feminine interest; in the
street. where the average woman, in the
vernal season, never fails to twist the
muscles of her neck in attempting to OBJ
serve how passing bonnet looks from
behind; and in the shop windows, which
are thronged with eager students of the
various modes. And so, when the "open-
ing day. arrives, the average woman,
with fifty different ideals floating in a
hazy atmosphere in her mind, enters upon
the task of purchasing the article that she
| desires. When, after much hesitation,
deliberation and discussion, certain
style has been selected she orders the
bonnet TO be trimmed, and she goes away
with feeling of relief. which, before she
reaches home, gradually changes to con-
viction that the very worst style of all has
been chosen. And thus, when the bonnet
reaches her, she pronounces it hideous,"
and proceeds to pick it to pieces with the
determination to make it over again.
When the work of reconstruction is
completed the bonnet is not satisfactory.
No spring bonnet ever was. The very
loveliest of them is worn with q secret
and oppressive belief that something about
it might have been improved. But when
it has been trimmed and re-trimmed until
the task becomes wearisome and heart
sickening, and until the owner is almost
ready to curse the day when such tor
ments of the spirit and the flesh were in
vented, it is at last accepted as an unsatis
factory shape, as the best that can be done
with the material. But the first time that
it is worn, the owner perhaps observes
that Mrs. Brown, whom she meets in the
street, has her feather upon the right side,
and another piecemeal reorganization is
undertaken, only to be repeated aftCrward
when ii is perceived that Mrs. Jones bon
net, with the feather upon the left side,
looks far better than the bonnet of Brown
Partial cOntentment perhaps might come
with the disposition of the feather in
accordance with the mode of Jones, if the
owner of the bonnet did not perceive at
church that Mrs. Smiths bonnet is the
most beautiful of all, with feather on
each side and perhaps one in the middle
There is no comfort in the service of the
sanctuary upon the day when such dis
rn iS hn
turns home with a feeling strong upon her
that there are some trials in life which can
hardly be reached even by the consultations
of religion.
The direst agony usually is over when
the season is thus far advapced but the
sum of misery that yet remains in the
discomfort with the spring bonnet as it is
in its final form is merely dreadful to con-
template. What the remedy shall be only
female philosophers can decide Sheer
barehcadedness would seem to offer per-
manent relief, and to the tyrant man there
would appear to be very little risk to
physical health in change from bon
net that is pinned to the extreme rear
Of the back hair to no bonnet at all But
if hcaddress of some kind really is re-
garded as necessity, perhaps a COM
promise might be made at some comfort
able point between the folded towel worn
upon the head ofthe Italian peasant woman
and the gorgeous mass of flowers, frippery
and fol-de-rol which form the vexatious
spring bonnet of the woman of America.
-PhiLadslphia Bulletin.