The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1889-01-02

ehe Advocates a General Reform In Mems
Dress.


Ihave been told, 1 know not whether
truly, that in the United States Of
America fustian smock and blouse are
clothes unseen, unknown; and that the
old broadcloth of Sunday-going suits,
when worn tbreadbare, is the singularly
inappropriate garb in which the Amer
lean husbandman tills or delves his
mother earth. The picture of him thus
attired at the tail of his pillow is so
melancholy that even the fact that it is
probably steam pillow which he
handles cannot outbalance the dreari-
ness of ii, and it is companioned in
melancholy by the information afforded
at the same time that there is no such
thing as peasantry known in this land
of black coats; there are only hired
men," The superior manhood and civil
status of the hired man TO the peasant
may be knotty political question open
to dispute; but the superiority of
clean fustian or linen seems to me
proposition which nobody in their
senses can care TO maintain. The one
supreme excellence in any kind of
clothes is their fitness for the occasion
on which they are worn. Nothing can
be more unsuitable for field work or
any open air work than broadcloth or
any cloth, and nothing is so uncleanly
and so unlovely as a suit of clothes
which has been worn and outworn as q
best suit and has passed into working
use with all its stains and spots OF the
past upon it.
There is no working dress so clean,
80 convenient, so manly, SO becoming,
as the b ouse OF France. 1t is an ideal
dress. When made IN velvet for man
of pleasure it is charmingly pictur. lue
and simple: when worn III linen by the
artisan or the laborer it lends Itself TO
every movement OF the limbs and body:
its belt braces the loins. and while in
winter any quantity OF wool can be
worn beneath it, itslwashab,e qualities
make it entirely suitable for a working
dress, and its lightness and convenience
in summer are beyond question. Why
is not this charming and most sensi-
BILE garb universal? For the rich il
would be capable OF an infinite variety
Of adornment from embroidery in
silk or in boullion thread, while for the
poor it combines cleanliness and con-
venience as no other dress does.
The present fashion of mems dress
has no single quality to recommend it;
1t is awkward, ugly, confounds the
shapely limbs with the unshapely, and
IS the most grotesque and unnatural
costume in which the human frame
has ever disguised itself. If any of
the statues which have been made of
IN 10 n
remote posteri.y, that posterity will
certainly call in question either our
sanity or our civilization. There is no
other age which has possessed a cos
tune SO utterly absurd and SO entirely
hideous, unsuitable for every purpose
for which it is worn, ill-adapted TO any
single season of the year, and destroy
ing every line which makes the human
form harmonious. The trousers alone
is an article of such fearful hideousness
that it is hard to understand why a
world which is not wholly bowlegged or
spindleshanked can ever have submit
ted to its tyranny. The only plea ever
heard advanced for it is that it con-
ceals delormities but if deformity be so
general, of what use are modern gym
nastics, games, aud sport? To what
use is hygiene made the A b c of mod
ern existence? There have been i'll
shaped men from the days of Socrates
TO those of Prince Eugene; but that
can be no reason to sacrifice the we'll
shaped multitude to them; Quasimodo
is no law for Phnbus. The present
fashion of male dress may continue to
to exist because there is 10 man of
great eminence with courage enough
oh ~