s too absurd for
these people who are abject slaves to the whimsicalities of the
designer, who is a wag in his way, as has been well shown in a story
told to me. The designers for a famous man dressmaker in Paris had a
habit of taking sketches of the latest creations to their club meetings.
One evening a clever caricaturist took a caricature of a fashion showing
a woman with enormous and outlandish sleeves. It created a laugh. "As
impossible as it is," said the artist, "I will wager a dinner that if I
present it seriously to a certain fashion paper they will take it up."
This is said to be the history of the "big-sleeve" fashion that really
amazed the Americans themselves.

The customs of women here are so at variance with those of China that
they are not readily understood. Our ways are those culled from a
civilization of thousands of years; theirs from one just beginning; yet
they have the temerity to speak of China as effete and behind the times.
In writing, the women affect the English round hand and write across
from left to right, and then beginning at the left of the page again.
They are fond of perfumes, especially the lower classes, and display a
barbaric taste for jewels. It is not uncommon to see the wife of a
wealthy man wear half a million pounds sterling in diamonds or rubies at
the opera. I was told that one lady wore a $5,000 diamond in her garter.
The utterly strange and contradictory customs of these women are best
observed at the beach and bath. In China if a woman is modest she is so
at all times; but this is not true with some Americans, who appear to
have the desire to attract attention, especially that of men, by an
appeal to the beautiful in nature and art; at least this is the
impression the unprejudiced looker-on gains by a sojourn in the great
cities and fashionable resorts. If you happen to be riding horseback, or
walking in the street with a lady, and any accident occurs to her
costume whereby her neck, her leg, or her ankle is exposed, she will be
mortified beyond expression; yet the night previous you might have sat
in the box with her at the opera, when her decollete gown had made her
the mark for hundreds of lorgnettes. Again, this lady the next morning
might bathe with me at the beach and lie on the sand basking in the sun
like a siren in a costume that would arrest the attention of a St.
Anthony.

Let me describe such a costume: A pair of skin-tight black stockings,
then a pair of ti