Evening star., 1894-03-24


yAS[TSN M would remain the sole
EI.8 \ rAMM property Ct the fops
&A4R NWMNN who brought it again
fHIiS 1W@IIIl into vogue. The slop-
IllI WNV/ ing should ar belongs
tWh .NNW essentially to the do
AFT nothing class. 1t is
met with most large
ly among that small
fraction of the human family wnere Hon
est work for the day, honest hope for the
morrow" has been tabooed and everything
in existence has been summed up as
bore" They have in fact, adopted it as
their sign manual, their trade mark.
wish that they had patented the thing. so
| that 1t could never have got 10 he common
property. The edct has gone forth. how
! ever. that shoulders shall SLOPE and row
all the girls are trying to train down again
the shoulders that they have been SO proud
| ly displaying having an almost mascu-
| line squareness We will no longer see
| women with the level shoulders that Phid-
| las gave his Minerva or those of PTaX-
| titles Venus, but must take up the man
| tle-pray heaven, the manners and morals
| will be left to molGer-of Anne of Aus
| tria and of Madame Maintenon, Madame
| Pompadour and all the others who wore
| the tiny panniers, the round-ncck dresses,
| the falling collars and the rare laces that
are again so much priced. In those days
| they wore, too hoops and bustles, slippers
| without heels and preposterous head di ess-
| es, and were always ''swooning." There
| are a great many things that women will
| do when fashion commands, but | think
| they will draw the line on the Stiffness
| that made that period notorious.
Noman's dress is constructed more near
| ly on hygienc lines than ever before in the
| history of the world. Greek lines were
| loose enough, but they were not hygienic.
| II one of those ancient Gracian gOddesses
| should be set down in this ninetneurh cen
| tury of energetic hustle she would find her
| flowing robes about as much of nuisance
| as trained dress at an inaugural ball.
| She would be simply impracticable The
| Grecian woman did not live in a fat; she
| did not go to office or clerk in store. She
| did not give o'clock teas in a six by ten
| parlor. and she didn't play tennis bowl
| or fence, and she didn't have &c run Up
| and down stairs forty times a lay in the
| Mother Hubbard thing called a Greek dress.
| L heard dressmaker say not lOn:; since
| that before many years a :nodSte would
| have to study anatomy. so as to be able
| to construct dress on absolutely scen-
| tific lines
The slopng shoulders are not a pleasing
, innovation to Dorothy and the rest Of the
| girls. and they were discussing Them at
| our house the other day. The consensus
| of opinion was that the style vas not grace
| full nor pretty. Then the conversation lat
urally turned on what constituted real
beauty. anyway.
That Thing Womnn's Beauty.
Il was reading what a French writer said
about it the other day" said Bobbte, and
| l don't quite agree with him. He seems to
! find beauty mainly in the physical woman.
She must have small rosy eG-s, a slender
white throat, small white hands, nicely
| tapering fingers, a smooth serene brow,
! uniformly arched temples. small mouth,
narrow eyebrows, which do not meet.
| dark eloquent eyes, small pretty feet, be
not too tail, graceful, have a gentle voice,
| good taste, and be attentive in her de-
| meanor to others. o, yes, she must have
| a superficial education. Now how DO you
| like the picture?'
That was Grenaille was it not?" asked
| Elaine from the depths of a big chair.
/ II think l recognize the sentiments as his.
| 1t is my candid opinion that he would
| stand a poor show as an apostle of beauty
| today. You see, ne wrote away back in
| the sixteenth century. Woman then was
a creature of sentiment, a lovely lacka-
| daiscal die-away being, given to trembling
| emotions or swoons of insensbility at any
| emergency. A tender fragile flower, care
fully reared under glass. Her delicacy was
abnormal. and her descendants feel to the
| present day the effect of her false system
| of living, and exhibit it in delicasy of
| frame, overstrung nerves and morbid
shrinking from responsibility. l don't
think that the woman who pronounced
| lunar apostrophes. in thin kid slippers, who
| swooned when q man told her he loved
! her, and repeated the operation twice in
succession when he said that he didn't, is
| to be compared with the women of today.
| The nineteenth century woman is built on
| broad lines. She is robust and stands on
| he. own feet Her intellectual balances the
emotional side of her nature, and she stands
| on the same plane with man when she
| invades his world. The creature that
| Grenaille describes could not do that she
may have been pretty, but 1t was the
| l.
| nineteenth-century woman is just as
| beautiful, and a great deal nobler, in my
| opinion"
Il don't think that mere regularity of
| feature amounts to much" said Nora, Ie-
| fectlvely. Nora is as pretty as a half
blown rose, and just as sweet. Il think
| there must be something back of a face
to make it really beautiful. The windows
| of the soul must not mirror an ungarniShed
| Interior
| Beauty Local Issue.
| II heard an awfully homely girl give her
| idea of beauty once, and when l thought it
| all over it seemed that she had it about
right" said Dorothy, laughing at the le-
membrance. Il have heard of people who
would stop a clock, they We're so homely,
but 1 never believed it till 1 saw her.
! Positively. she had not redeeming
feature. But talk about soul and mind,
| she had abundance of both, and a sweet
voice beside. one day we got to talking
| about what constituted a really beautiful
woman, and she said that she believed
! that it like some men think about the
| tariff purely a local matter. Beauty in
| one land is the reverse in another she
went on. L think. individually, that it is
| soul that makes beauty, and nothing else
| | pretty inside any girl that ever
| lived. Take a lot of pretty girls in the
dark, and my chances are as good as any
| to be called a beauty. Let a blind man
smell a bunch of mignonette and
| camelia, and he will say that the mignon-
ette is the most beautiful. because it ap-
peals to the beautiful interpreted by
| him, far more than the pure white flower
which he must test with another sense to
| appreciate. This proves that beauty as SO
| called is in the looker-on and not In the
| looked upon. Let man listen to two girls
chattering in another room. and he will be
| in sympathy with the one who has the
sweete- voice. Men have been known to
| fall madly in love with voice, and later
with its possessor, although she was as
| horlely as a woman could well be-
| think on the whole that my houely
| friends theories are nearly correct"
| Bobbie nodded her head approvingly 81
| think that a beautiful soul makes a beau
| tiful face but If the soul is lovely will not
| its owner want to keep its tenement as
sweet and clean and perfectly dressed as
possible. We should not despse or belttle
| the good gifts that nature has bestowed
upon us. They were surely given us for
some wise purpose"
| After All, Dress is Important