errible colds, such troublesome coughs, such griping pleurisies, such
burning fevers, and so many ailments!

Now, I ask again, and you shall be judges, young women, if your modes of
Dress do not injure your bodies? Do they answer the ends of Dress? Any
one who has given the subject a moment's judicious consideration must
see that there has been and still is a fearful departure from the real
uses of Dress. The primary object of Dress is to clothe and make
comfortable the body, so that it may be the peaceful and happy
dwelling-place of the spirit in its earthly pilgrimage. But filling it
with disease is not making it comfortable. Hampering it in fetters is
not making it comfortable.

I have referred to a few of the most prominent evils of our present mode
of female Dress. Now, let me ask, if our women would dress warmly and
securely from wind and wet, yet not in too close confinement, their feet
and limbs; if they would shorten their skirts so they would swing clear
of wet, mud, filth, and passing obstacles; diminish their number and
dimensions, so that their weight would not be burdensome, and suspend
them from the shoulders, instead of girting them around the abdominal
and spinal regions; would give their chests a free and easy play; would
cover their heads, arms, and necks whenever exposed to cold and damp
weather or night air, and would always seek to be clothed easily and
comfortably, giving always a sufficiently free circulation of air
between their dresses and bodies, to carry off the constant exhalations
going out from every living body; if they would thus dress, would they
not be far more healthy, happy, and useful? Would the roses not return
to their cheeks, the full, swelling beauties of woman's strength to
their forms?

This subject has weighty moral and religious considerations connected
with it. Have we any moral right thus to abuse our bodies, thus to
commit a snail-working suicide? What matters it, so far as the guilt is
concerned, whether we kill ourselves in a minute or a year, a year or an
age? We have more suicides among us than we sometimes imagine. The
young miss goes out in a cold night, with bare arms and head and neck,
and wafer-like slippers on her feet, with her waist engirded in cords
and whalebones, and her load of burdensome skirts, and dances in high
glee two thirds of the night; then, with a vail on her head and her
under-garments not yet dry from the recent perspiration, she goes to her