Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1899-03-19

By LILLE HARRIS.

A6A0A0AS = tU0t, "a SO0A
everywhere-that is as it ought to be.
for after all the true god worship is
the golden calf, and we all do it. The
husband is wealthy, and she has such
taste in dress. Unkind people do say
that she was once a d~ressmaker's APP
prentice, but people will SANDER every
body. Well, anyhow, now she is a
leader Of fashion, she wears a sealskin
cape which cost 100 guineas, over a
velvet dress that cost 80 or 80 guineas.
Her dress is BETTING her rank. 1t is de-
scribed in umerous ladies' papers. So
little Mrs. Ben Smith. whose husband
has ESQ pounds a year. and who is
going to buy her a winter dress, is
quite determined that she will have a
velvet dress and seal cape. So her fine
gown is a velveteen at Is. cd. a yard,
and her cape is of electric seal. So she
INITIATES THE GREAT LADY,
and she looks very nice. OF course,
the things do not wear well, and are
wretchedly cold, but still she has been
in fashion. In turn, Emily Jane, who
gets SO a year, thinks she will imi-
tate her mistress. because the velvet
looks so nice, and the cape is so lovely.
She spends all her hard-earned wages
in a wretched seal plush and a second
hand velvet dress, in which she is thor
1,,~h1xv 1noorpfNrfoh1n ond in vyhfoh
she looks absolutely ridiculous. But
what does it matter? She has initiated
her mistress, and her mistress has
looked like the great lady, and so they
are all satisfied. Of course, sensible
people do say that if Mrs. Smith had
bought a nice serge costume and cloth
jacket, it would have cost less and
looked better. and if her servant had
got a good linsey gown and a stout
cloth Jacket it would have looked bet
ter, but they would have dressed up to
their position, and that would never do
in these days. We must pretend to be
what we are not. If we cannot wear
diamonds we must have paste, and II
we cannot get silk v~elvets, we must
get cotton backed. We must be in the
fashion, and, after all, if one is in the
fashion what more can be desired?
OUR YOUNG MEN
are nearly the same, although I hon.
estly believe that pretence is not so
rampant amongst members of the OPP
posite sex. Perhaps it is because they
get it knocked out of them at school,
or with their contact with the world.
In everyday life it is not seen so much,
but it is when they go away on a oil
day that the prevailing evil begins to
develop. They invest in tourist suits,
cheap and ill-ftting, and they think for
a couple of guineas that they can get
clothes similar to young Demedes,
who pays ten guineas for them. They
do not care for the fact that one suit
is made of Harris tweed and the other
of cotton cloth, and our boys stop at
hotels, and play at cards and drink
vile whiskey, and talk horrible slang,
and wink at the girls and ogle the airs
of a blase man about town-not that
they like anything that they are doing
any more than anything they are
drinking or smoking, but they think
they are in the fashion if they pretend
to be fast and d~issipated and extrava-
CANT and reckless; whilst, in truth,
they are industrious and sober-good
sons and brothers. faithful husbands
and fond fathers; only nowadays it is
the fashion to be neither one or the
other, so they have to pretend to be
immoral, dissolute, or else be looked
upon as prigs.