of little
importance. The point where this subject becomes painful is in families
of small means where young girls imagine that to be elaborately dressed
is the first essential of existence, and, in consequence, bend their
labors and their intelligence towards this end. Last spring I asked an
old friend where she and her daughters intended passing their summer. Her
answer struck me as being characteristic enough to quote: "We should much
prefer," she said, "returning to Bar Harbor, for we all enjoy that place
and have many friends there. But the truth is, my daughters have bought
themselves very little in the way of toilet this year, as our finances
are not in a flourishing condition. So my poor girls will be obliged to
make their last year's dresses do for another season. Under these
circumstances, it is out of the question for us to return a second summer
to the same place."

I do not know how this anecdote strikes my readers. It made me
thoughtful and sad to think that, in a family of intelligent and
practical women, such a reason should be considered sufficient to
outweigh enjoyment, social relations, even health, and allowed to change
the plans of an entire family.

As American women are so fond of copying English ways they should be
willing to take a few lessons on the subject of raiment from across the
water. As this is not intended to be a dissertation on "How to Dress
Well on Nothing a Year," and as I feel the greatest diffidence in
approaching a subject of which I know absolutely nothing, it will be
better to sheer off from these reefs and quicksands. Every one who reads
these lines will know perfectly well what is meant, when reference is
made to the good sense and practical utility of English women's dress.

What disgusts and angers me (when my way takes me into our surface or
elevated cars or into ferry boats and local trains) is the utter
dissonance between the outfit of most of the women I meet and their
position and occupation. So universal is this, that it might almost be
laid down as an axiom, that the American woman, no matter in what walk of
life you observe her, or what the time or the place, is always
persistently and grotesquely overdressed. From the women who frequent
the hotels of our summer or winter resorts, down all the steps of the
social staircase to the char-woman, who consents (spasmodically) to
remove the dust and waste-papers from my office, there seems to be the
same com