The Aberdeen weekly. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1878-1933, 1907-03-01

By Dorothy Dix, Special Correspondent OF the
New Orleans Picayune.
New York, Feb %, 1907.
There should be another Carlyle
to write a new and more terrible
"Sartor Resartus." Women are
clothes mad. They are selling their
souls and their bodies for a handful
of lace and chiffon and velvet. The
curse of dress is upon them and is
sending more of them to perditiOn
than the curse of drink is sending
men to hell We need no other re-
form 50 badly as we do to curb
women's passions for adjoining them
selves. This is the one thought
above all others that | have brought
away with me day after day from
the Thaw trial, for the very founda-
ton stone of that tragedy is built on
Paris hats and gowns. The haunt
ing specter that stalks through it is
the dressmaker, and over the horror
and degradation of it all you see two
women bartering away everything
that is good and pure in woman
hood for a few rags Of finery.
The story of Evelyn Nesbit and
her mother is potentially the story
Of a multitude of other women. In
New York, IN every city and ham
let of the land, there are hundreds
and thousands of women who have
deliberately elected to follow the
broad way instead of the straight
and narrow way so that they may
walk in silk attire They sin not
through any love save the love of
dress. Clothes are the tempta-
ton that they have not been able to
resist. If you will look below the
surface you win see that the only
real passion of Evelyn Nesbit's life
is for finery. Clothes are the only
things she has ever thought of
seriously, the only thing she has
ever thought worth while struggling
for, the only thing she has been
willing to sacrifice herself for. In
all her story on the witness stand
this note of dress ran curiously
through it, and it gave 2 hard, ma
terial sound to it that was pitiful.
1t was pitiful to see one give SO
much for so little
Stanford White, who knew the
hearts of light, foolish women as an
anatomist knows every fiber of their
body, knew that the surest way to
appeal to Evelyn and her mother
was through their love of dress, and
he began his wary plan of attack by
sending the girl gift of a hat, a
feather boa, a beautiful red cloak
a long cape, and some red crepe,
out Of which the mother was to
make the girl a gown.
There are many things a woman
forgets, but never her first grown-up
long dress. This was Evelyn's first,
and her face softened as she de-
scribed it. 1t was red, she said,
with little black spots in it, and she
wore it with the red cape. Her
mother finished it off and sent it to
the theatre one night, with a note
saying that she was to wear it to a
party to which Stanford White had
invited her at his studio. She put
it on and went, an innocent Red
Riding Hood. going as unwarily as
ever the child in the old nursery
story into the VOLTS den. As he
looked upon her, perhaps the cynical
old libertine had his sardonic vision /
of the scarlet woman she was to be. |
Doubtless, at the first, Evelyn I
Nesbit was, as she has sworn, the |
hapless, helpless victim of White, /
but the continuance of her friend |
ship was merely that she might be
provided with the extravagances of +
life and trail beautiful gowns up and +
down Broadway A great love dig +
nifies and to a degree condones a
great sin, but she never pretended
to love White.
He was always repulsive to her.
Describing her first sight of him,
she said:
/ looked up and saw a great,
big, fat, old. yellow man standing
1t the head of the stairs waiting for
rs. | thought him hideously ugly
Whites marvellous talents, his
brilliant conversational powers, his
harm of manner were all lost on 1