Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1896-05-24
THE SHIRT WASTED GIRL.
Bah Discourses on the Degeneration Of
WOman'S Dress.

FEMININITY, LIKE PRIZE FIGHT
Frs. LOOK ABOVE THE BELT
ONLY-WHERE GOODNESS IS A
HOLLOW MOCKERY-NINETEEN
INCHES OF WAIST AND A BAD
TEMPER-THE GIRL WHO SAYS
"DAMN"-A WOMAN CAN NOT
LOCK A TRUNK-BAB'S COMPAR-
ISON OF OPOPANAX-BEAUTIES
OF THE COUNTRY DURING THE
HEATED SPELL-A SNAKE SKIN
THAT WASN'T STRETCHED
RUSTICS DO NOT KNOW THEIR
BLESSINGS.
From Our Regular Correspondent
New York. May 81.
Everybody and everything is an
abomination of desolation. One would
become a murderer with very slight
provocation. One feels as If one could
kill that baby next door for scream
ing. Nothing seems good in the eating
line but ices and cool drinks. Nothing
seems good in the dressing line but that
which is known as a skirt and shirt
waist. Women drift to the shirt waist
habit as they do to drink. or gambling,
or slang. or bicycles. or any other vice.
The shirt waist originally started as a
shirt, pure and simple. 1t was worn
by the tailor-made girl with a well-cut
shirt and jaunty jacket. Then some
body who knew its comfort and thought
nothing of its effect. put in full sleeves,
made it a little closer fitting, and wore
il With a skirt and without a coat. and
the consequence is that some of the
slinkiest looking skirts that we're ever
created or ever insulted a good dress
maker by their appearance, attach
themselves unto shirt waists, and each
wearer of the combination counts her
self dressed.
The impression when one looks at a
New York street on which women most
do congregate Is a lot OF boys who
haven't pulled their shirts down we'll,
who are wearing not trousers nor knee
breeches. but some fool sort OF an ar
rangement that is not well shaped.
That is the skirt. The shirt wearer
never studies her mirror below the belt,
and as long as the stiff satin bow at her
neck locks well, and her belt it taut.
she gives no thought to the old skirt. "
as she calls 1t. Mis-cut skirts, mis-fit
skirts. half-worn skirts, badly hung
skirts. and all sorts and conditions Of
skirts are counted proper as long as
the shirt waist is above them. Just be
tween you and me, | sometimes wonder
when look at a woman in a shirt waist
that there doesn't come over her a SEN
sation of nudeness, for that is the kind
of feeling that would attack a man If
he took off his coat and waistcoat and
pranced around during the day in his
shirt sleeves, after the parlance OF mas
culinity. Then, too, the shirt waist is
a fraud. All the people who sell them,
or make them, or wear them, dilate in
their GOODNESS. The GOODNESS might be
a truth if it were not for the fact that
the shirt waist is surmounted by the
collar. in stiffness like unto the starch
lest of the starchy, and finished at the
wrists by cuffs that are not only stiff
but require cuff buttons. There is no
iov in life when a woman has to put a
pair of cuff buttons in pair OF cuffs.
The chances are ten TO one that the
link goes through the first button hole
with ease, but through the second IT
will not go. 1t slips, it slides, and It
cuts your finger. Then all that you can
do. if you wish to unite that cuff and
that link is to sink your dignity, and
with an air of subsection lick the back
of that button hole until it bends to
your will.
AS FOR BUTTCNING THE COLLAR
in front. lovely woman has shown how
extensive her knowledge is by conquer
ing that. She does not break her finger
nails over a collar button, not she. She
coolly takes a small glove buttoner,
and. quicker than a magician can say
"Hev, Presto" the union is achieved.
The shirt waist is demoralizing. With
II the average woman wears made
lie which shows that she has no aSDre-
citation of what is really good form,
from the standpoint of the haberdash-
er. Then, nine times out OF ten, the
girl who wears her shirt waist carries