Los Angeles herald., 1891-12-19

none OF the best. The skirts
should not come below the
shoe top. They should be made with
yokes, no gathers or plaits, with as little
fullness and trimming as possible.
The results OF all the compressions and
weights are seen in hospital and dissect-
| ing rooms, in sanitariums and the deli
cate invalid OF today. Enlarged spleen,
in some cases the liver almost cut in
two, ribs overlapping, and in all cases
the womb more or less removed from
its normal position.
But we do not live in a hopeless age.
The mothers of today may cling to cor
sets, heavy skirts, bands and trains, but
they are teaching their daughters to see
the folly of them. The young woman
of today rides bicycle, rows, plays bill
lizards, fences and belongs to an athletic
club. She must vault, tumble, swing
clubs, and 60 through all the contortions
known as the Swedish movements. She
must work out the Delsartean creed
with intelligent exercise.
DR.. Sargent's famous school in Boston,
the Ladies' Athletic club of New York,
the Hemenway gymnasium at Harvard
are all developing muscle, beauty, grace
and health. All over the land are
classes for physical culture, and the
young student feels necessity for a
corsetless waist, short shirt and
plenty OF breathing room.
To our daughters must fall the her.
itage of dress reform. They will seek the
beauty of the Venus de Milo, rather
than that of the delicate mother OF to-
day. They will scorn fashion of a
decaying civilization. The fashionable
girl at seashore and mountain, at club
and gymnasium on the tennis ground
and bicycle, will grow thoughtful and
then radical, and the knell of the cor
set, the dragging skirts, the bands and
ligatures will be rung before the next
century shall have fairly dawned.
GOWNS.
Miss Wing next took up the subject
of Gowns. She had no paper, but read
some interesting articles from Kate
Fields Washington and the Arena.
Miss Wing has very musical voice,
and a charming manner, and pre-
sented in very graceful style many in
teresting points during the reading OF
the articles, which were much enjoyed
by the club.
BoNNETs.
The last paper, entitled Bonnets, from
the pen of DR.. Lummis, was extremely
witty and full OF logic. She showed first
how bright lawyer, in defending the
owner of a dog who had bitten neigh
Dor, proved by all the laws of logic and
the graces Of rhetoric: First, that there
could be no such thing as neighbor;
secondly, that no one had ever been
bitten by dog, and finally, that there
never was dog.
If the privileges of logic and rhetoric
were allowed, it were easy to prove that
there was no such thing as a bonnet.
A bonnet is primarily, and definitely
covering for the head-ours are after all
but strangely thatched roofs.
The covering for the feminine head is
almost entirely an artificial necessity,
created by the primal instincts for So
called adornment. 1t is quite possible
the ancestral mischief was done when
Eve emerged from the first tiring
room, behind the trunk of the tree OF
knowledge OF good and evil, hiding her
downcast eyes under the shade of some
tropical, broad-leaved vine. Adam, not
having the bill to pay, pronou need it
very becoming, my DEAR"
Since then every self-respecting wo-
man has some kind of head gear, ac-
cording to her own or her milliner's
ideas.
At this moment we are effecting an
apparent compromise with an affair like
a pancake, with rooster tail attach
ment, and revel in an artistic horror,
becoming to but few, capable of being
indefinitely expensive and generally
useless. 1t being difficult to make our
bonnets air tight, we are by grace of
that, not so bald as our brethern, who,
by the way, as long as they wear their
cylinders cannot throw stones at us.
The modern bonnet sins chiefly against
ones individuality.
Because Sara Bernhardt's strange,
long eyes and oval face peered out more
fascinatingly from behind a cloud of
soft tulle, some of us, too prudish even
to see her acting, smothered ourselves
in yards and yards of the self same tulle.
Because Jane Harding, on board the
steamer tied her veil tightly beneath
her chin to prevent the wind from visit
ing her soft hair too roughly, we, for
an entire season, went about with
draw-string round our threats, and our
heads in a bag, like a 'pig
in poke" Ii the tulle is
dotted, or the Harding veil" criss-
crossed, SO much the better; we know
.'chic" thing when we see it, and the
oculist must live on the result.
Mrs. Jamison declares half truths to
be the perdition of women" She might
add that thoughtlessness was their be-
setting sin. l would fain believe it is
from no worse reason that women per-
NIT themselves to wear singing bird
on their heads. Yet women must know
of the Audubon society and it's work,
they must see the statistics of the an
nual slaughter of the feathered inno-
cents, butchered to adorn our holiday
headgear. All women have heard the
prayers, the groans, the cynical laughter
spent-alas, in vain-upon the theater
high hat.
| should like to suggest, in very wee
small voice, that if each member of the
Friday Morning club would promise her
self never to belle her humanity by
wearing dead bird, or to outrage her
natural good taste by wearing broad
hat to theater performance, that some
far-away glory might be exchanged for
a good deal of present satisfaction.
We cannot hear nation praising us
afar, but we can be human and reason
able, which is all the law and the pro-
phets of this minor gospel.
A most charming and animated dis
cussion followed the reading of the pa
pers, participated in by Mines. Stilson,