well
aware that concentration on adornment diverts woman from the development
of her brain and her soul, and enhances in her the characteristics of
the harem favorite. One tentative suggestion is being made, and that is
a uniform for women. The interested parties point out that men
practically wear uniform, that there is hardly any change from year to
year in their costume, and that any undue adornment of the male is
looked upon as bad form. Thus, while few men can with impunity spend
more than five hundred dollars a year on their clothes, many women do
not consider themselves happy unless they can dispose of anything
between five and twenty times that amount. This, while involving the
household in difficulties, lowers the status of woman by lowering her
mentality.

[7] _My Past_, by COUNTESS MARIE LARISCH.

Feminists do not ask for sumptuary laws, having very little respect for
the law, but for a new vision, which is this: Man, intellectually
developed, decks himself in no finery, because it is not essential to
his success; woman must likewise abandon frippery if she is to have
energy enough to reach his plane. They propose to attain their object by
the force of their example, and I have received several letters on the
subject, which show that the idea of fixing the fashions is not
entirely wild, for fashion consists after all in wearing what everybody
wears, and if an influential movement is started to maintain the costume
of women on a very simple basis, it may very well prevail and kill much
of their purely imitative vanity by showing them that undue devotion to
self-adornment is very much worse than immoral: in other words, that it
is in bad taste.

Incidentally the Feminists believe that the downfall of many women is
procured by the offer of fine clothes. They hope, therefore, to derive
some side-profits from the simplification of woman's dress.

The question also arises as to whether woman can become intellectually
independent, whether she does not naturally depend upon the opinion of
man. It is suggested that not even rich women are actually independent,
that women place marriage above their art, their work; but I do not
think this is a very solid objection, for the vaunted independence of
men is not so very common; they currently take many of their opinions
from their reading in newspapers and books, and must often subordinate
their views and their conduct to the will of their employer. The main
answer to