The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1886-03-18

and there are men who buy expensive suits
Of clothes and never pay for them, and
who go through the streets in great stripes
of color like animated checker boards. I
say these things because want to show
you that am impartial in my discourse,
and that both sexes, in the language of
the Surrogate's Office, "share and share
alike"
As God may help me I am going to set
forth the evil effects of improper dress or
an excessive discipleship of costume. 1t
is a simple truth that you all know, al
though the pulpit has not yet uttered 1t,
that much of the womanly costume Of our
time is the cause of the temporal and eter-
nal damnation of multitude Of men.
There is shamelessness among many in
what is called high life that calls for We
hement protest. The strife with many
seems to be how near they can come to the
verge of indecency without falling over.
The tide of masculine profigacy will never
turn back until there is decided reforma-
tion in womanly costume. am in full
sympathy with the officer of the law,
who, at a levee in Philadelphia last
winter, went up to so-called lady, and,
because of her sparse and incompe-
tent apparel, ordered her either to
leave the house or habilitate herself imme-
diately. It is high time that our good and
sensible women make vehement protest
against fashionable indecency, and, if the
women of the household do not realize the
deplorable extremes of much of the female
costume, that husbands implead their
wives on this subject, and that fathers pro-
hibit their daughters. The evil is terrific
and overshadowing.
! suppose that the American stage is re-
sponsible for much of this. I do not go to
theaters, so must take the evidence of the
actors and managers of theaters, such as
Mr.. John Gilbert, Mr.. A. NJ. Palmer and
Mr.. Daniel E. Bandmann. They have re-
Gently told us that the crime of undress is
blasting the theater, which by many is
considered school of morals, and, indeed,
superior to the church and forerunner of
the millennium.
must take the testimony of the friends
of the theater and the confirmation which
see on the board fences and in the show
windows containing pictures of the way
actresses dress. suppose that these rep
reservations of the play house costume are
true, for if they are not true, then these
highly moral and religious theaters are
swindling the public by inducing the peo-
pie to the theater by promises of spectacu-
lar nudity which they do not fulfill. Now
all this familiarizes the public with such
i'm proprieties Of costume and depresses the
public conscience as to what is allowable
and right.
The parlor and drawing-room are now
running race with the theater and opera
bouffe. They are now nearly neck and
neck in the race, the latter little ahead,
but the parlor and drawing-room are
gaining on the others, and the probability
is they will soon be even and pass the
stand so nearly at the same time that one
half of pandemonium will clap it's hands
because opera bouffe has beaten and the
other half because the drawing room has
beaten. Let printing press and platform
hurl red-hot anathema at the boldness Of
much of womanly attire. / charge Chris
tian women neither by style of dress nor
adjustment of apparel to become adj
ministrative of evil. Show me the
fashion plates of any age between this and
the time of Louis XVI. of France and
Henry VIII. of England, and Twill tell you
the type Of morals or immorals of that age
or that year. No exception to it. Modest
apparel means a righteous people. I'm
modest apparel always means a contain
mated and depraved society.
It is not only such boldness that is to be
reprehended, but extravaganza of costume.
This latter is the cause of fraud unlimitable
and CHASTITY. Do you know that Arnold of
the revolution proposed to sell his country
in order to get money to support his home
WARDROBE declare here before God and
this people that the effort to keep up ex-
pensive establishments in this country is
sending more business men to temporal
perdition than all other causes combined.
There are clerks in stores and banks on
limited salaries, who, in the vain attempt
to keep the wardrobe of their family as
snowy as other folks wardrobes, are dying
of muffs, and diamonds, and camels' hair
shawls and high hats, and they have moth
ing left except what they give to cigars
and wine suppers, and they die before their
time, and they will expect us ministers to
preach about them as though they were the
victims of early piety; and after high
class funeral with silver handles at the
side of their coffin Of extraordinary bright
ness, it will be found ont that the under
taker is cheated out of his legitimate ex-
penses! Do not send to me to preach the
funeral sermon of man who dies like that.
/ will blurt out the whole truth, and tell
that he was strangled to death by his wife's
ribbons. The country is dressed to death.
You are not surprised to find that the put
ting up of one public building in New York
cost millions of dollars more than it ought
to have cost, when you find that the man
who gave out the contracts paid more than
5000 for his daughters wedding dress.
Cashmeres of thousand dollars each are
not rare on Broadway. 1t is estimated
that there are 5000 women in these two
cities who have expended on their personal
array $4,000 year.
What are the men to do in order to keep
up such home wardrobes? Steal-that is the
only respectable thing they can do. Dur
ing the last fifteen years there have been
innumerable fine business men shipwrecked
on the wardrobe. The temptation comes
in this way: A man thinks more of his
family than all the world outside, and
if they spend the evening in describ-
ing to him the superior ward
-