cage paraphernalia of the sixties, or the Grecian bend
of a later date. Yet in those days the severely plain skirts of the
present would have seemed positively indecent. It has been necessary
to dwell on this thought in order to sufficiently remove existing
prejudice to enable a fair consideration of the question in its
broader aspects. I have also introduced fair examples of prevailing
fashions during the past generation and reproductions of Greek,
Shakespearian and other simple costumes worn at the present time by
the queens of the stage, to show by comparison how infinitely more
graceful, beautiful, comfortable, healthful, and by their very
elements of comfort and healthfulness, ethically superior, are these
costumes to those which conventionalism sanctioned in the sixties,
seventies, and eighties. Is there anything immodest, indecent, or
suggestive of impropriety in Mary Anderson in the graceful Grecian
costume of Parthenia, presented on the preceding page? Of the tens of
thousands of people who have witnessed the performances of Madame
Modjeska, Miss Anderson, Julia Marlowe, or Margaret Mather in the
costumes given in this paper, it is not probable that a perceptible
number have seen aught improper or even injuriously suggestive,
notwithstanding they are so radically unconventional. Surely no mind
accustomed to think broadly and view problems on all sides, and
unaccustomed to revel in the sewer of sensualism would see in the
attire of these estimable ladies aught but costumes at once graceful,
refined, and apparently infinitely more comfortable and healthful than
those represented in any of the fashion plates I have reproduced, and
which millions of women of good sense have under the stress of
conventionalism been compelled to wear. Let us compare Miss Anderson's
Grecian costume with the dress of a society belle in the seventies,
which required from twenty to thirty yards of material, and when
completed and fitted transformed the wearer into a monstrosity with an
unsightly hump on the back, and a street cleaner of immense dimensions
trailing for several feet in her rear.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: _From copyrighted photo by Sarony._ MARY ANDERSON AS
PARTHENIA.]

From artistic, hygienic, economical, and ethical points of view, to
say nothing of common sense and comfort, is not the simple and
beautiful costume of Parthenia incomparably superior to that which
marked the second decade of the past generation? W