of life, respond to texture, colour or line, as others do to music or
scenery, and to be at their best in life, must dress their parts as they
feel them. Japanese actors who play the parts of women, dress like women
off the stage, and live the lives of women as nearly as possible, in
order to acquire the feeling for women's garments; they train their
bodies to the proper feminine carriage, counting upon this to perfect
their interpretations.

The woman who rides, hunts, shoots, fishes, sails her own boat, paddles,
golfs and plays tennis, is very apt to look more at home in habit,
tweeds and flannels, than she does in strictly feminine attire; the
muscles she has acquired in legs and arms, from violent exercise, give
an actual, not an assumed, stride and a swing to the upper body. In
sports clothes, or severely tailored costume, this woman is at her best.
Most trying for her will be demi-toilette (house gowns). She is
beautiful at night because a certain balance, dignity and grace are
lent her by the decolletage and train of a dinner or ball gown. English
women who are devotees of sport, demonstrate the above fact over and
over again.

While on the subject of responsiveness to texture and colour we would
remind the reader that Richard Wagner hung the room in which he worked
at his operas with bright silks, for the art stimulus he got from
colour, and it is a well-known fact that he derived great pleasure from
wearing dressing gowns and other garments made from rich materials.

Clyde Fitch, our American playwright, when in his home, often wore
velvet or brocaded silks. They were more sympathetic to his artist
nature, more in accord with his fondness for wearing jewelled studs,
buttons, scarf-pins. In his town and country houses the main scheme,
leading features and every smallest detail were the result of Clyde
Fitch's personal taste and effort, and he, more than most men and women,
appreciated what a blot an inartistic human being can be on a room which
of itself is a work of art.

PLATE XXX

Souvenirs of an artist designer's unique establishment, in
spirit and accomplishment _vrai Parisienne_. Notice the long
cape in the style of 1825.

Tappe himself will tell you that all periods have had their
beautiful lines and colours; their interesting details; that
to find beauty one must first have the feeling for it; that
if one is not born with this subtle instinct, there are
man