Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-05-23
THE PLAIN MATTINGS

Are used, with borders Of the fancy checks
or vice versa. Some large rooms of country
houses are hung with mating, arranged in
panels, with border in rattan.work, OF
dados of the darker mattings are used,
with Chinese or Chinese.looking wall.
papers. For such rooms, and summer use,
furniture of bent wood, rattan, or Chinese
cane-work, is bought. The curtains are of
scrim, with antique edging and inserting of
new tamboured lace and muslin, or the
pretty Madras muslins with their ground
color of cream, sage green, or robin 's.egg
blue, all bestrewn with gayly yet softly
tinted birds, vines, sprays and trusses Of
flowers. The new Japanese screens and
silken wall-scrolls are delightfully."- pretty,
and so are the lace lamp.shades with their
big punches of red, yellow and white and
pink roses. Kate Field says that
ENGLISH WOMEN,
Instead of being the worst, are now the
best dressed of women, because the
esthetic devotees have studied form and
color and costume historically and artisti-
oally. That may be trae for the followers of
the esthetic movement, and English women
certainly need all that art gospel can do for
them-not because they have personal
disabilities, but because, as a whole, they
seem utterly devoid of instructive taste in
clothing themselves. But some of the
latest costumes via Paris and Berlin
are enough to make us all turn too.
toos and lily worshippers. Real hoops
are somewhat worn again they call them
something else, but they're real hoops for
ungracefulness and unmanageableness
Then there are long tight sleeves, with
tight cuffs and high shoulder puffs peaked
waists skirts all baggy puffs from hip to
hem, the skirts very voluminous about the
hips and narrow at the knees; bows and
pleatings in all impossible places, and
swaddlings of the most uncomfortable
looking of pannier sashes.
MANY OF THE NEWEST GOWNS
Have long sleeves. with frills over the
hands. Are we to lose the long gloves,
one of the prettiest of many charming late
fashions? In Kensington, London, the
Countess Heberden and some other ladies
recently gave an exhibition of a newly.
invented sanitary costume for ladies, to
ladies only = an exhibition that drew
crowds. No eorsets, the clothing all
hung from the shoul lders, and the great
feature, divided skirt" That is to
say full trousers-not the old Bloomer de-
vice-but trousers so full that they seem
draping skirt, unless its wearer choose to
race or climb fence. Overdress to the
knees. But such dress, however, com.
Portable and sanitary, cannot be picturesque,
or even tolerably well.looking, with trous-
ers falling over the feet. They must be
shortened to leave the ankle and lower
leg bare. That is the experience and
testimony of every lady who has ever tried
to plan pictorial, gymnastic, swimming,
or woods costume. And why not? Look
at pretty peasant costumes all over Europe,
and the make. believe peasant girls of our
fancy balls. Nothing for repose, and
drawing-room life, and occasions, will ever
do away with long, sweeping drapery, but
ask any sensible woman who has ever
tried to climb mountain, or, in city
or country house, to do her own
housework, with three to four yards of
drapery round her would-be active feet,
whether or not she would not welcome
some briefer species of gown that she could
wear without being guy, or suspected of
being radical of the widest tendencies.
Here, at any rate, is one New Englander
who would rather have free gown than
free vote MISTRESS MAYFLowER.