The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-03-04
The IntOSIcation of Dress.

and color, added to the astonishing pre-
MUM placed upon good clothes" by So
ciety and the press, we are not surprised
that the horizon of so many women's
lives is bounded by dry-goods estab-
lishment, and the dictionary of their Ian
guage contained in the bazars of fashion.
We have just tossed aside recent num-
Der of one of the most influential journals
of the East, twelve pages of which are
filled with what purports to be & record
of American society, past and present"
Long lists of names are given of women
in New York, Philadelphia, Washington,
Cincinnati and Louisville who are to be
handed down to posterity as famous-for
what? For their helpfulness to the age
in which they lived? For patriotic en-
deavor? For earnest work for the flu
ture? For an unselfsh hospitality2
For having developed and consecrated
to friends their best gifts of song or con-
versation? No! but for the quality of
dry goods they wore.
We have actually sacrificed an hour in
looking through these twelve pages to
see if we could discover the name ola
single woman poet, actor or philanthro-
pist singled out as worthy of mention
because Of such fact, but we fail to find
one. Even Mrs. Aubrey H. Smith, one
of the true nobility, is placed on record
as the lady "who wore an imported dress,
G dress of striped garnet and old-gold
satin with a court train of black da
masse, trimmed with rich thread lace"
In every city the homes which have
become true literary centers, the rare
places where genuine manhood and wo-
manhood are recognized despite the awk-
ward setting of plain attire, are passed
by in contempt in making up asocial re-
cord to show the progress of the last CEN
tury.
Twelve pages, and not hint that one
of these ladies gave utterance to brill
liant thought, suggestive repartee, but
that like procession of wax figures they
passed before the admiring world, habi-
ted as follows
Mrs. - appeared in many elegant
robes. Her evening toilets were rs fol-
lows, etc., etc.
In the name of womanhood, we pro-
test, and for the sake of American girl
hood, we beg the editors of our represen-
tative journals to put premium upon
something in the world besides dry
goods.
Not much of compliment to beauty
when the SOULFUL eyes" even are sur
passed by "a faultlessly artistic toilet of
black satin embroidered in rosebuds and
pansies and sprays of filmy green and
white opera hat, whose tints of color
matched the flowers, and evening gloves
completed a toilet whose beauty attracted
one like some rare picture"
So long as women are content to be
Judged only by the amount of expensive
dry goods they wear, so long will they re-
ceive such criticism as the following,
which appears in a recent popular book:
"For.is not, let me ask you to take, for
instance, mans sublime faculty of rea-
soning and logical comprehension, far
more wonderful that reasoning man
should have the same parents as a wo-
man, than that they should both have
the same parents as monkey?" And
Just SO long as our women make no pro.
test against thus being described and val
ued as so much lace, or so many yards
of velvet, will thinking men dare to ad-
dress them in the following strain. I
quote from a recent publication: ''1n
a girl, however pretty, what is there TO
interest q man, if he reads nothing in
her face from night to night but that she
is getting daily more worn and jaded in
the search for rich husband? Or even,
to go step higher, in the unthinking,
uncultivated firt, SO common in every
class of society-what is there in her that
a man will not soon discover to be insip-
id and wearying? But give her one gen
uine, one disinterested taste, and all is
changed. If 1 had an audience about
me Of young ladies, whom it was not too
late to advise-girls entering on the
world, determined to run the worldly
course, and to satisfy all the expectations
of the most excellent and lowest-minded
of chaperons, would say this to them:
1 have no doubt you are ignorant; of
course you are all vain. That to make
brilliant match is your great object, you
all avow. A certain sort of flirting, of
which the less said the better is your
most distinguished taste. I know all
this II should say, and can't help it;
nor do ask you to alter one of these
points for the better. But this do ask
you to do-try to add something else to
them. Try to win for yourselves one
taste OF truer and deeper sort. Study
Wordsworth and some parts of Shelley;
open out your sympathies, by their aid
in just one direction. Learn to love the
sea and the woods and the wild flowers,
with all their infinite changes of scent
and color and sound, the purple moor,
the mountain stream, the rolling mists,
the wild smell of the heather. Let
these things grow to haunt you like a
passion 4 and then by and by,
60 and look in the looking-glass, and
study your own face. Hasn't some new
look, child, come into your eyes and
given them expression, a something
they wanted before"
Aye, more and more, dear girl friends,
to-day, intoxicated, enervated by the
strange passion for dress, begin, to study
humanity determine to do some one
thing toward making life brighter for
other people, if it is nothing more than
amusing little, restless, disappointed
child, and get in the habit of sometimes
studying the old gold and crimson, the
lovely rose and dreamy blue, or the
pearltinted gray of Gods sunset clouds
lift your eyes just above the shop win
dows and honor the young woman whose
conversation is filled with pearls Of
wit and diamonds of suggestion, and then
shall you have filed one claim to place
in the record of Amerca's true women
Mrs Elizabeth Boyton Har6ert.