The times. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1890-1903, 1893-08-20
WILL ror LET UP ON Lorr ruL1En7n


THE result will be that Mr.. Aston will
spend money and Mr.. Smith will make
money
In one Of our fashionable boarding
schools for young ladies. the principal.
who inherits some Puritan blood has
interdcted all current literature except
THE Iron Age" She says that every
thing else has gone over to skirts. Even
the daily paers have a skirt depart
ment of literature. in which men and
women artists devote their souls day and
night to portraying and decribing petit
coats, chemisettes and hosiery. This
stalwart New England principal says that
she doesn't know what the effect OF all
this is upon men, but she contends that
the influence is ruinous upon young girls,
and so she tries to correct Ii by making
them read the only paper that at this
moment hasn't got a booming skirt de-
partment. She says that IL her young
women found out that the whole Ameri-
can public was ravening after drapery
they would get an utterly fatal idea of the
supreme importance OF hair cloth and
garters and lace.
| don't pretend TO know how true this
is. but 1 do pretend to know what the
effect Of the voiuptuous cyclone is upon
some of the yirile followers who are left.
The effect is one Of intolerable ennui
They are bored to death with silken
fiutter. They feel that they are lost in
a fog Of tule, and they take up the
Iron Age or Practical Engineer with the
same sense Of relief that comes 10
man when he rushes from the atmos-
phere Of dead tube roses and, jumping
on a horse. faces the stih, western
breeze.
Some time ago-well, It is six or seven
years-there was a little, peaked, neu-
ralgic girl with chronic influenza, sing
Ing or trying TO sing through her nose
In one Of Nat Goodwin's farces at the
Biiou. She had some brains, but she had
no development OF limb. There was
round-faced, Acknowledged and brainless
beauty in the same bevy named Lillian
Grub. who walked away with all the
honors If she but lifted her skirts. This
set the girl Of the chronic influenza 10
thinking She arrived at certain conclu-
sions. She made the discovery that beau
Nv was a matter OF environment. That
haegard legs became spirituele II there
was tulle enough and IL could be kept
in motion: that iridescence was not i'm
possible even TO influenza II the stock
ings were the right color and the lights
were arranged properly; that dimity II
there was enough of it became a delir-
ium.
Her name was Loie Fuller.
This attentuated spirit concentrated
her soul on illusion, which she bought
by the yard. When she had accomplished
ten yards, the world turned round and
Locked at her. She made IL fifteen, and
the papers began to suspect her genius.
She increased It to twenty and mankind
nurmured her name I'm soft accents. she
stamped excelsior" on IL with indel-
Able ink and made II twenty-five. Then
New York wanted to make n statue OF
her for the Mail But Ike Mr.. Astor,
she shook the dust of New York from her
sandals end went abroad. she patented
the last five yards and took Paris by
storm.
Then a curious phenomenon took place.
she became n nucleus OF girl In n comets
tail of tulle. but the more completely she
was swallowed up in tuile, the more re-
spl endently she was heralded as girl.
She began to effect politics, religion
social economies. She muhled the wheels
of revolution In Paris with lace. Politi-