essed in the
style in which you see her in the picture, the difference between her
and the other ladies would be very striking, to say the least.

[Illustration: THE WOMAN WHO LOOKED LIKE A CAT.]

The curious methods of dress in olden times were so many, and were of
such infinite variety, that I cannot even allude to them in a little
article like this; but you cannot look at very many pictures of the
people of by-gone days without seeing some costume which will appear
quite funny, if not absolutely absurd.

You need not go very far back either. What could be queerer than the
high coat-collars of some of your great-grandfathers, which came up
under their ears, while their throats were wrapped in fold after fold of
long cravats--or else encircled by a hard, stiff stock,--and the
hind-buttons of their coats were away up in the middle of their backs!

But perhaps your great-grandmothers, with the waists of their gowns
just under their arms, with their funny long mittens and their great
calash bonnets, were just as queer as their husbands.

Now the question comes very naturally to us: Why did these people, as
well as the people who came before them, dress in such ridiculous
fashions? We know that many of them were very sensible folk, who knew
how to do many things as well as we can do them, and some things a great
deal better. Mentally and physically the most of them are not surpassed
by the people who live now. Then why did not they know enough to dress
sensibly and becomingly as we do?

In reply to this I will say that your great-grandfather and your
great-grandmother, unless they belonged to some religious sect which
regulated the clothes of its members, would have dressed exactly as your
father and mother now do, if it had been the fashion in their day.

And if you had seen their portraits, dressed in clothes of the present
day (which, had those old people worn them, would have been out of
fashion long before you were born), you would have thought they looked
perfectly ridiculous.

The truth of the matter is, that with a great many of us the attractive
and desirable qualities of clothes depend entirely upon their relations
to the current styles or fashions. We think everything unbecoming and
ugly excepting those styles; and no matter how absurd the present
fashion may be, there are not ten persons out of a thousand who, when
they become used to them, do not admire them and follow them to the
extent of their abil