Norwich bulletin., 1916-03-09

You may talk about deep troubles" said the president of the card club when the refreshments came around, but the depth of affliction, to my mind, is to have a stylish child!
 Maybe she'll get over it eventually" she went on sadly, but the attack Is raging so virulently with her and her friends that life at present is very hard for the innocent bystanders! Their creed is that all the world is and the other part not. So far as they are concerned the part that is not stylish is not even visible. For them the unfortunate human beings composing it simply do not exist. They would call Joan of Arc trump and consider frightfully dull great phil anthropist with a mind above clothes! They pour over extreme fashion books and gurgle in rapture over the most atrociouS creations, which would be mobbed if one dared to apear in them on the street!
 Sometimes in her enthusiasm Mi randa simply has to talk to some one and therefore she descends on me.
 iook!' she breathes, mother, isn't this perfectly sweet? Isn't 1t stylish, though? l never saw anything l like better-and I'm going to have a dress just like it this spring of taffeta. And a hat like this-and a coat like this! Aren't they lovely?'
 'Now," said the president of the club, you cannot take a young per son past 16 and say sternly: s'No, you can't have clothes like that; you will have to wear what I choose for you!" So l try tactics. I murmur that if she will look closely she will observe that the dress she has picked out would make her look like a ballet girl, the hat suggests a circus rider, while the coat is outre enough to recall viS- ions of brass bands and banners. I add that I should hate to think of her out in a cruel world clad in such an array and couldn't she pick out some thing a trif1e quieter
 Miranda regErds me pityingly. But mother she explains, gathering up her magazine, you don't understand! These are the very latest things and ] everybody who knows styles will be wearing them!' And I am morally convinced that when the time comes 1 Miranda will have exactly those ] things she has picked out.
 i "1 get so tired arguing that I fin | ally wouldn't care if she dressed in a i horse blanket and bath slippers!
 expect she would dress that way, too l if somebody announced this as the lat | est garb. And then nice, conserva. i tive people take one look and mur-
 mur: Gracious! Why does her mthel i dress her like that!' Little the! l know that it is as much as I can do tC | escape being dressed myself in tho
 same fashion. It is terribly tryins when Miranda tries to take me il hand as little kindly attention betweeI spasms of attiring herself.
 T found her turning up the hem O my expensive tailor suit this winter
 She said she was tired of seeing m look so dowdy in a long skirt.
 feebly explained that the tailor hat
 asserted that middle aged ladie
 should not have their skirts nor
 than five inches from the ground am
 Caroline almost had mysteries. Sh
 says that even if I haven't any ide
 of style she has, and most people wea
 them from eight to ten. I try t
 point out to her that it is an unpleaS ant shock to walk behind a woma ; and judge she is Is from her sl1iI
 length and find when you see her fac - that she is 40. But Miranda sternl , finished the hem-and I have to ri it all out when she departs.
 T meet Miranda on the street an 5 not that she approaches me with face full of dawning horror. What I happened% I shriek, five houses of , Has there been an accident?' Moth , er!' Miranda gasps in throaty, tragi . tones, didn't I tell you never to pI your hat on at that angle? It is ex actly opposite to the way they al wearing them! It looks dreadful! I be so ashamed to have any one SC you! Wait till fix it!' Then befol 7 can protest she gives it a yank ths . dislocates my scalp and, while six
 teen passers-by stop and interestedl
 watch proceedings, she sticks tf me off looking like cross between a