The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-08-10
TRAGEDY OF DRESS.
DR.. Talmage Discourses on the Vic
Tins of Fashion.
S3aieful Influences of Inordinate Love o
Dress-Incentive to Fraud. Distrac-
ton Of Public Worship and
the Souls Destruction.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, who is still
journeying around the world, gave out
as his latest sermon through the press
n discourse on 1.-The Tragedy of Dress, u
the text selected being l. Peter, iii, 3-4;
''Whose adjoining let it not be that out
ward adjoining of plating his hair, and
of wearing of gold, or of putting on OF
apparel; but let it be the hidden man
of the heart" Following is the SER
mon:
That we should all be clad, is proved
by the opening of the first wardrobe in
Paradise, with its apparel of dark
green. That we should all, as far as
our means allow us, be beautifully and
gracefully appareled, is proved by the
fact that God never made a wave but
He gilded it with golden sunbeams, or
n tree but He garlanded it with bios
SONS, or sky but He subdued it with
stars, or allowed even the smoke of a
furnace to ascend but He columned and
furreted and domed and scrolled it
into outlines of indescribable graceful
ness When / see the apple orchards
of the spring and the pageantry of the
autumnal forests, come to the con-
clusion that if nature ever does
join the church, while she may
be a Quaker in the silence of
her worship, she will never be a
Quaker in the style of her dress Why
the notches of fern leaf, or the stamen
of water lily? Why, when the day
departs. does it let the folding doors
of Heaven stay open so long, when it
might go in SO quickly9 One summer
morning l saw an army of 100000
spears, each one adorned with a dia-
1nond of the first water-I mean the
grass with the dew on it. When the
prodigal came home his father not
only put coat on his back, but jewell
ny on his hand. Christ wore a beard.
Paul, the bachelor apostle, not afflicted
with any sentlmentality, admired the
arrangement of woman's hair when
he said, in his epistle: "If woman
have long hair, It is q glory unto
her" There will be a fashion in
Heaven as on earth. but it viii be diff
ferent kind of fashion. 1t will decide
the color of the dress; and the popula-
ton of that country, by beautiful
law, will wear white | say these
things as a background to my sermon,
30 show you that L have no prim, pre-
else, prudish or caSt-iron theories on
the subject of human apparel. But the
goddess of fashion has set up her
throne in this world, and at the sound
of the timbrels we are all expected to
fall down and worship. The old and
new testament Of her bible are the
fashion plates. Her affairs smoke with
the sacrifice of the bodies, minds
and souls of 10000 victims. In her
temple four people stand in the organ
noft, and from them there comes
down cold drizzle of music
freezing on the ears of her worshipers.
This goddess of fashion has become a
rival of the Lord of Heaven and earth,
and it is high time that we unlimbere
our batteries against this idolatry.
When | come to count the victims of
fashion, find as many masculine as
feminine. Men make an easy TRADE
against woman. as though she were
the chief worshiper at this idolatrous
shrine. and no doubt some men in the
most conspicuous part of the pew have
already cast chances at the more re-
tired part of the pew, their look a
prophecy of a generous distribution.
My sermon shall be as appropriate for
one end of the pew as the other.
Men are as much the idolators of
fashion as women, but they sacrifice on
different part of the altar. With men
rooms and yachting parties and wine
suppers. In the United States the men
chew up and smoke 500, 900, 600 worth
of tobacco every year. That is their
fashion. In London, not long ago, a
man died who started in life with $780,
900, but he ate it all up in gluttonies,
sending his agents to all parts of the
earth for some rare delicacy for the
palate, sometimes one plate of food
costing him $500 or $780, He ate up his
whole fortune and had only one guinea
left; with that he bought woodcock.
and had it dressed in the very best
style, ate it, gave two hours for diges-
ton, then walked out on Westmin-
ster bridge and threw himself
into the Thames, and died, doing
on large scale what you
and have often seen done on a small
scale. But men do not abstain from
millinery and elaboration of skirt
through any superiority of humility.
1t is only because such appendages
would be a blockade to business. What
would sashes and trains three and a
half yards long do in a stock market?
And yet men are the disciples of fash
Eon Just as much as women. Some OF
them wear boots so tight they can
hardly walk in the paths of righteous.
ness. And there are men who buy ex-
pensive suits of clothes and never pay
for them, and who go through the
streets in great stripes of color like
animated checker-boardS. / say these
things because l want to show you
that l 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,
shall show you what are the destroy.
ing and deathful influences of in
ordinate fashion.
The first baleful influence | notice is
in fraud illimitable and ghastly. Do
You know that Arnold, of the revolu-
ton, proposed TO sell his country in or
der to get money to support his wife:i
wardrobe? declare here before God
and this people that the effort to keep
up expensive establishments in this
country is sending more business men
TO temporal perdition than all other
causes combined. What was it that
sent Gilman to the penitentiary, and
Philadelphia Morton to the watering
of stocks. and the life insurance presi-