an
ignorant young woman in the "height of fashion;" put on plumes and
flowers, diamonds and gewgaws; paint her face and girt up her waist, and
I ask you if this side of a painted feathered savage you can find any
thing more unpleasant to behold. And yet just such young women we meet
by the hundred every day on the street and in all our public places. It
is awful to think of. Why is it so? It is only because woman is regarded
as a doll to be dressed--a plaything to be petted--a house ornament to
exhibit--a thing to be used and kept from crying with a sugar-plum show.

She must learn that she has a great soul, a great mission, a great duty,
and a great power, before she will break away from the bonds of the
toilet and be herself. Woman by nature is no more a toilet puppet than
man. Her mental and moral duties are equal to his. Her powers of mind
and heart are equal to his. Her field of labor it is wide as his. Her
time is as precious as his. It is as important that her soul should grow
as his. She has as much need of knowledge, wisdom, courage, strength of
mind and purpose, as much need of all the powers and beauties of a
cultured soul, as he. Why should she not adorn her mind, develop her
powers, live to a high purpose, act well a noble part, do and be
according to her capacity? Let young women elevate their aims; give less
time to the toilet, more to study, duty, and active employment; regard
themselves as something more than dolls, as something intelligent,
useful, to be improved, to grow wise and great. Let them dress their
minds in wisdom, adorn their hearts with virtue, clothe their souls with
strength, with the majesty of noble purposes and high resolutions, and
they will soon be something more than automatons on which the milliner
and mantua-maker hang their wares.

I have written plainly rather than flatteringly, and I have done so
because I believe the time has fully come when woman should be a woman,
and not a mere gaudy appendage to man; when her soul should wake up from
its long lethargy and put on the habiliments of wisdom and usefulness;
when she should live to a grander purpose than she has done, and should
make her power felt more sensibly in the morality and religion, business
and bosom, of the world. I am not a disregarder of the beauties and
proprieties of Dress. On the contrary, I admire appropriate Dress. It
speaks out the man or woman. But I would have everybody feel that the
man makes the Dress.