New Britain herald., 1916-08-08
LONG MAY THEY TWINKLE.
An Old-fashioncd Gentleman Comes to
 the Defense of Exposed Ankles.

LOnUOn Day.
 It is the province, not to say the
 duty of this writer to comment on
 the more obvious current topics. But
 because he is just 8 bit old-fa shioned
 and finds it difficult at times to escape
 altogether from tho influences of a
 training begun now some time since,
 he has baked a good while at any ex-
 pression of interest in perhaps the
 most obvious of them all. But, like
 policeman, a fireman or a, soldier,
 there rests upon the Commentator an
 ethical obligation to ignore all per sonal considerations when duty calls; and yesterday he was hailed by friendly citizen and asked why he did not say something upon the particu- larly obvious subject-legs; feminine legs
 Thus challenged there is nothing for the Commentator to do but to com ment; albeit with blushes born of the aforesaid early training, when it was not just nice even to use the word; when legs were limbs and even as such must be referred to with Writh- ings and wr1gglings and doprecatOry coughs and stammerings, and when 1t was an outra geous breach of etiquette, even more or less highly immortal, to recognize said limbs as being a portion of the female anatomy.
 This is the age of emancipation, and nowhere has emancipation come with such startling suddenness and such wholesale effect as to the legs of the female of the species. A couple of years ago, even, legs were cOntraband on land, though 1t is true that for some time previously they had secured in large nea sure the free dom of the seas That is to say that the legs that were untrammeled and disported jOyOusly in the surf or on the bathing beaches were still under the ban ashore. She who permitted the exhibition of an inch of her legs on the street was regarded with keen interest by men and with dark suspi- Cion by her sex. But now all Is changed lly-may I even be pardoned for saying delightfully."- changed. Legs have been emancipat- ed; they are no longer absolute con- traband; 1 am beginning to wonder if they are even conditional contra band. As Mexican revolutiOnists add to their manual resources by iberating the prisoners in the jails, so America has added to it's artistic and esthetic re- sources by liberating the legs of it's women. Or perhaps it would De truer to say that the legs themselves have increased the sum of American beauty by breaking jail.
 I have a wee suspicion that when my friend practically dared me to make some remarks in this column about legs he did so in the expectation that I would rerOnstrate at them; that I would take the position of one who is shocked; that I would rally, as it were, to the support of the tradi ttons of the days of limbs and would pose as the champion of those con- ventions which used to demand that legs take their place with murder and the ma jority of family trees as some- thing to be kept from public knowl- edge at any cost. If he did he fooled himself
 At the risk of being condemned as hcpelessly hOrrid by certain of my elder readers, and of being execrated by those masculine hypocrites who pretend to a prudish horror at the eX hibitiQn of so much feminine pulchri-. tude above the ankle joints, now that I have tackled the subject I shall an 1ounce herewith, boldly and uncom 1 weather or wet, af1oat or ashore, win ter or summer, without equiv0catiOn, evasion or false pretense.
 And why not? Nowhere has Ma ture created sweeter lines than those in which she has molded the feminine ankle; nowhere has she exerted her artistry with more delicate care than in the curves of legs. I have some times wondered if, in the infinite pains she took to create beauty in legs, that every busy artist did not make the legs first and in the making work herself out a bit, so that by the time she came to the creation of collar bones she was a trifle Jagged and so sighted the job; for she seems to have come something of a f1ivver there, since you must always take your choice of too obvious collar bones or a trif1e too much plumpness else where.
 And if thing is useful and inno- cent and replete with beauty, why in the name of goodness hide it? Why make a secret of legs any more than of arms, of ankles any more than wrists? I pause, as the spellbinders say, for an answer.
 Legs. arising from kippy high laced boots; legs, curving delightfully | above neatly fitting summer shocs' | legs clad in snug silk or isle, legs l de1iCately slender or comtortaply ! plump, legs free of the hobbies of l silly odd conventions legs that prove l by their very symmetry that It IS a sin to soQuestcr them, have como out of the retirement of ages, as America came out of her retirement 1 when Columbus took her by the neck and dragged her out, in their turn be- ing dragged out from beneath street sweeping, unhygienic, horrid long skirts by one of those amazing freaks of fashion which now and then-and i only now and then-seem to be inspl-