Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1905-02-15


late nature in her very heart and mis-
understand completely the spirit of
things. If dress were only a precau-
ton to shelter us from cold or rain
piece of sacking or the skin of beast
would answer. But it is vastly more
than this. Man puts himself entire
into all that he does. He transforms
into types the things that serve him.
The dress is not simply covering; it
Is symbol. l call to witness the rich
Towering of national and provincial
costumes and those worn by our early
corporations. A woman's toilet too,
has something to say to us. The more
meaning there is in it the greater its
worth. To be truly beautiful it must
tell us of beautiful things, things per-
sonal and veritable. Spend all the mon
ey you possess upon it; if its form is
determined by chance or custom, II it
has no relation to her who wears 1t, it
Is only toggery, domino. Ultra fash
bnable dress, which completely masks
feminine personality under designs of
pure convention, despoiis it of its prin-
eipal attraction. From this abuse it
comes about that many things which
women admire do as much wrong to
their beauty as to the purses of their
husbands and fathers. What would
you say Of young girl who expressed
her thoughts in terms very choice in
deed, bat taken word for word from
phrase book? What charm could you
find in this borrowed language? The
effect of toilets well designed in them
selves. but seen again and again on
NIL women indiscriminateIy, is precise
ly the same.
l cannot resist citing here a passage
from Camille Lemonnier that harmo-
nizes with my idea:
Mature has given to the fingers of
woman charming art, which she
knows by instinct and which is pecul
iarly her own, as silk to the worm and
lacework to the swift and subtle spi-
der She is the poet, the interpreter of
her own grace and righteousness, the
spinner of the mystery in which her
| wish to please arrays itself. All the
talent she expends in her effort to equal
man in the other arts is never worth
the spirit and conception wrought out
through a bit of stuff in her skillful
hands.
"Well, wish that this art were more
: honored than it is. AS education should
consist in thinking with ones mind,
feeling with ones heart, expressing the
little personalities of the inmost, invis-
ible (which, on the contrary, are
| repressed, leveled down, by conformi-
| ty-I would that the young girl in her
novitiate of womanhood, the future
mother, might early become the little
exponent of this art of the toilet-her
| own dressmaker, in short-she who one
day shall make the dresses of her chill
| dren, but with the taste and the gift
to improvise. to express herself in that
masterpiece of feminine personality
and skill, gown, without which wo-
man is no more than bundle of rags"
The dress you have made for your.
self is almost always the most becom-
ing, and, however that may be, it Is
the one that pleases you most Wom-
en- of leisure too often forget this;
working women also in city and coun-
| try alike Since these last are cos
/
in very doubtful imitation of the mod
! ish world, grace has almost disappear
! ed from their dress. And has anything
more surely the gift to please than the
fresh apparition of young working
! girl or daughter of the fields wearing
| the costume of her country and beau
tiful from her simplicity aloneT
These same reflections might be ap-
piled to the fashion Of decorating and
arranging our houses. If there are toll
lets which reveal an entire conception
of life, hats that are poems, knots OF
| ribbon that are veritable works or art
| go there are interiors which after their
! manner speak to the mind why, I'M
| der pretext of decorating our homes,
| do we destroy that personal character
which always has such value? why
! have our sleeping rooms conform to
! those of hotels, our reception rooms to
waiting rooms, by making predomi-
nant a uniform type of official beauty
What a pity to go through he
houses of a city, the cities of a country,
the countries of a vast continent, ana
encounter everywhere certain forms
identical, inevitable, exasperatlng by
their repetition! How aesthetics would
gain by more simplicity! Instead OF
! this luxury in job lots all these deco
/ rations, pretentious, but vapid from
iteration, we should have an Infinite
variety; happy improvisations would
strike our eyes, the unexpected In
thousand forms would rejoice our
hearts, and we should rediscover the
secret of impressing on q drapery or
n piece Of furniture that stamp OF hui
man personality which makes certain
antiques priceless.
Let us pass at last to things simpler
still; mean the little details of house
keeping which many young people OF
! our day find so unpoetical. Their con-
tempt for material things, for the num-
| BILE cares a house demands, arises from