Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1882-11-03
VOL. LVI NEW SERIES, VOL. xxx.


The tall hat of civilized life appears to
DIR. Alfred Carpenter n montrosity. 1t
Is by universal consent neither beautiful
nor pleasant. Boots are made on the
theory that their first duty is to disguise
and misrepresent the contour of the foot
In feminine dress garments are loose
where they should be tight, and tight
where they should be loose Places are
protected which would be better without
any protection, and others left unregarded
which need it most Materials are seec-
ted without any relation to fitness for the
Office they have to fill. II the external
substance be appropriate, n lining is com
monty appended which spoils its whole
use. The animal, vegetable, and mineral
worlds have been liberal III exquisite
dyes for the establishment of human
clothing. Yet the wearers connive glad
ly at the superiluous employment by
manufacturers of active poisons. DR.
Carpenter is as disdainful of the taste Of
the fabrics in which his contemporaries
enclose themselves MS of their whole
someness They contravene the lines of
true beauty, in his judgment, as crimi-
nally MS they violate correct sanitary
principles. There is some consolation in
the advantages the present generation
possesses over more than one of its pre-
decessors i'll these matters. Gentlemen
of position are no longer required to
shave their heads in order to make room
for wig. They have escaped from pow
der. They are not obliged to put on
clothes SO uncompromising that their
owners, it is recorded were forced to
have themselves drodped into them from n
height. They no longer spend fifty or a
hundred guineas on n single gorgeous
suit. The silk hat, if uglier, is cheaper
and handler than the courtly beaver of
the days of George III. and the Prince
Regent Masculine attire is easier and
less painful than formerly. So little docs
it vary that it is permissible to drop ont
Of thc..fashion without being tlagrantly ri
diculons. 1t is cheap and unOstentatious.
For men, however, there remain many
points OF costume to which usage alone
and aversion for the trouble of change
can reconcile the mind. Iutrinsicallv
there can be nothing more absurd than
the whole apparatus of rigid collars and
cuffs and neckties. Only the clergy ms
yet have had the courage to emancipate
themselves from the servitudc of stiff
hats.
Than evening dress never was any
pTchttT tTaNebtN OF eleBlhct anu cOnpfu-
ity invented. Though young boys ought
to raise by subscription statue to the
discoverer of knickerbockers, their seniors
in solemn stecples, and useless jac kcts,
and sufiocating collars. continue to enjoy
IN their dress not much more freedom
than II herald in his tabard. Women
have but begun to mediate on enfran-
chisement from dress as ungraceful as it
is inappropriate, Men, if their clothing
is almost as grotesque as ever, have ut
least delivered themselves from the obi
CATION of perpetual change. Women
wander, as of old, from one ugly fashion
to another as ugly, the slaves of ingenious
and restlesss milliners. A test Of the
merits of each modification is the aston
lshed mockery it encounters from the
disciples of its successor. Awkward and
extravagant as fashion may he declared
by posterity, for women there is no Sc
curity that it will not return. BY II happy
chance they have been saved of late from
some remarkable deformities above and
around them, devised by imaginations of
dressmakers and hairdressers. But no.
body can say how long the interrcgnum
Of sense may last. Times.