St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-01-10
A Revolt of Fashion.


Americans have always been more or
less victimized by subservience to the
arbitrary dictates of fashion that con-
tinually makes salaam toward the East,
toward Europe and the ''old world'
countries. While this habit Of mind IS
still characteristic of us as people, it
is encouraging to note that in one par
ticuiar revolt has begun. We refer to
the conventional European tour. For
many years, because it was sanctioned
by fashion, it was supposed by a great
many persons to be the most pleasurable
and Instructive Of possible trips beyond
their. Immediate native borders.
Most heroically, therefore, they
brayed the material dangers anu
the ennui of an Atlantic voyage,
and spent months on the worn
thoroughfares of Europe, in the wake of
hundreds of thousands that had taken
precisely the same excursion under pre-
cisely similar auspices, with precisely
the same mistaken notion that they
were making the most profitable eX-
penditure of their time and money. He
who ventured to assert that there could
be found within the confines of our own
country beauties and wonders excelling
those Of foreign lands, atmOspheres and
environments more romantic and more
suggestive than any known to the other
hemisphere, was looked upon as an &C.
centric and possible enemy to the pub
lie veal. People were enslaved by the
same rules that still prescribe the cut of
their garments and the dimensions of
their cartes-de-vislte. Fashion ordered
them over sea, and over sea they hast
ened.
But in spite of prejudice the plain
frrrt hac re
try, onf own continent, is no whit be-
hind the .so-called ''old world" in att
Effectiveness to the unbiased traveller
There are no charms of climate, seem
cry. bloom and fruitage over sea that
California does not transcend in every
. particular. The odor of antiquity that
clusters about the pyramids of Egypt
+ hangs even more mysteriouSly over
more colossal pyramids In Mexico.
There are. close at hand, Alps and gla-
ciers, deserts, volcanoes, canons, petrl-
factions of entire forests, hot mineral
springs. cataracts, ruins of forgotten
civilizations, prehistoric dwellings still
resisting the leveling hand of time.
/ There are absolute projections of veg
citation, of flower and fruit, of land
scape and Of cline. Year by wear we
hear less of the old affected talk of Eu-
ropean scenery. He who has been abroad
DO longer imagines that he wears
an enviable halo. Multitudes who for
merly thought 1t necessary to spend
the winter in Italy OR the South OF
France, now repair to Southern Calf
fornia. They are abandoning the old
conventional routes for the unhack-
neyed delights of our own Southwest
1t is healthy revulsion. and one that
should be encouraged by precept and
example Ii is difficult to imagine a
more melancholy spectacle than an
American wanderer through Europe
who is ignorant of his own land. Such
snobbish representatives cast discredit
upon this nation, and it is satisfaction
to note that they are yearly becoming
fewer; and we can find word of praise
for fashion itself, when we find it, as at
present, strongly setting in direction
| approved by common sense, and point
ing to more valuable education and
| the increase Of just national pride.