es to be worn to pieces.

_Diogenes._ The great M. Comte, with whose works you, Hipparchia, are no
doubt familiar, divides philosophy into the three stages of Theological,
Metaphysical, and Positive. This general theorem he completes by
particular applications,--to costume among others. In this he
distinguishes the three stages of Tattooing (including paint), Frippery,
and Clothes. Man has reached the third stage, he says; woman is in the
second, and not entirely out of the first.

_Hipparchia._ Everything about a woman's dress is uncomfortable.
Everything is pinned on and false. There is nothing real but the trouble
and the expense; and women whose love of appearances exceeds their
incomes must work hard with their own needles. But they undergo it all
without a murmur,--I may say, with pleasure.

_Diogenes._ "For 't is their nature to," as I remarked just now. Women
are compounds of plain-sewing and make-believe, daughters of Sham and of
Hem. I consider dress an epidemic disease,--a moral cholera that
originates in the worst quarters of Paris. Every ship that comes from
those regions is infected with French _trollopism_, and should be
quarantined and fumigated until every trace of the contagious novelty
has been expurgated.

_Hipparchia._ Could a stranger, ignorant of our customs, suppose it
possible that beings capable of reason would habitually go out of a
winter evening less clad by half than during the day? I say nothing of
the propriety or good taste of this fashion. When Eve ate of the apple,
she knew she was naked. I have often thought, as I looked at her dancing
daughters, that another bite would be of service to them: it might open
their eyes to their uncovered condition.

_Diogenes._ Let us put that reform down among those we mean to carry out
last; unless, indeed, the neck of age commits the fault, then, I
confess, I should like to complain to the Board of Health and have the
nuisance abated. There is nothing sadder than to look at dressy old
things, who have reached the frozen latitudes beyond fifty, and who
persist in appearing in the airy costume of the tropics. They appear to
think, as Goldsmith says, that they can conceal their age by exposing
their persons.

_Hipparchia._ Their case is hopeless, I fear: we must teach sounder
ideas on all these subjects to the young.

_Aristippus._ You have tried it already. Did not a wise woman come from
the West preaching to her sisters that one of their lost