Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1884-07-10
Tight Gloves.

When Romeo exclaimed: 30 that
we're glove upon that hand!" he was
doubtless thinking great dea! more OF
the hand than OF the glove; and if we
conld imagine modern Romeo apos-
t,ophizing modern Juliet. we NAV be
sure he would prefer to see the hand
without any glove at all. Some curious
revelations have lately been made as to
the amount of torture ladies undergo in
the effort to wear gloves that are too
small for them, and, oddly enough, the
disclosures have taken the form of a
defense of the glove trade against the
charge that it can not produce gloves
that will fit the average hand. No doubt
it Is true that great many gloves APP
pear. when worn, to have been con-
structed without the least possible refer
ence to the anatomy of the human hand.
The same complaint has often been
made about boots; and when some en-
terprising shoemaker introduced the
anatomical boot it was felt that he had
struck out an entirely new line and
would be certain to meet with the sue
cess he deserved. A boot which bore
ShO w tJC uulll1il
foot was at one time curiosity, and
even now the vast majority of these
necessary articles are constructed with
pointed toes, with high insteps and
arched uppers, after fashion which, if
it were actually represented in the
human foot. would be regarded as a
deformity. Our subject, however, is
not boots, but gloves, and the question
to be considered is whether the gloves
are ill-shaped or the hands ill-shaped,
or whether there is any other explana-
ton why the two so rarely fit each
other.
The complaint which ladies make
against gloves in general is that they
ale too short in the fingers. and there
fire do injustice to the tarering and
delicate shape of that member which
Lord Byron regarded as the one infalli-
ole indication of aristocratic lineage.
The glove-makers reply that the defect
arises in nine cases out of ten from the
ladies wearing their gloves too small.
Thus lady who wears six and three
quarters can get her hand into six
and-a-half glove but in doing so the
length of the glove is taken up in the
width, and consequently the fingers, in
stead OF going well on, only 90 partly
on. The thumb fares still worse, for it
reaches, rs Il rule, only down to within
a quarter of an inch of its proper ter
mination, the end OF the glove, which is
cut to 90 around the wrist, having to be
joined across The ball of the thumb OF
course it is absurd to suppose that any
glove will stand such strain, or will
look well when dragged SO completely
out OF shape. We might as well at
tempt to put stocking over goose
berry bush as to draw six-and
-a-half glove over six-and-three-
quarter hand. The gloves tell us
that one of the still unexplo-
ded fallacies is that a glove to fit we'll
must fit tightly, the fact being that
comparatively loose-fitting glove has
far better appearance than one that is
half size too small, because the pro-
portion of the hand is. preserved.
Would a lady, ask the glovers, wear
bodice or dress so tight that her figure
seems bursting out of it, and drawn in
to all sorts of contOrtions as a conse-
quence of its smallness? Yet the same
lady will wear glove on her hand so
tight that the fingers look like
and the lack of the hand like
p:,rc'lm mt stretched on a drum head.
We fear the consideration OF this cues
ton involves the unkind admission
that there are ladies who have pretty
hands and ladies whose hands are the
reverse OF pretty. 1t is considered the
heighth of rudeness to designate any
lady as otherwise than beautiful, aud
he would be a rash man who
would venture to assert that all ladies'
hands are not small, and that all fingers
are not tapering. We are bound to say,
however, that many a lady's hand has
a stumpy appearance when gloved, and
a very elegant appearance when I'M
gloved, and this is undeniably due to
the practice Of wearing gloves which
can only be induced to go on with the
greatest Observation-Disclosures Bazar.