men, from the comfort standpoint, anyhow, are not
any more foolish than the garments to which the average man is incurably
addicted. If women are vassals to fashion men are slaves to convention,
and fashion has the merit that it alters overnight, whereas convention
is a slow moving thing that stands still a long time before it does
move. Convention is the wooden Indian of civilization; but fashion is a
merry-go-round.

In the Temperate zone in summertime, Everywoman looks to be cooler than
Everyman--and by the same token is cooler. In the winter she wears
lighter garments than he would dream of wearing, and yet stays warmer
than he does, can stand more exposure without outward evidence of
suffering than he can stand, and is less susceptible than he to colds
and grips and pneumonias. Compare the thinness of her heaviest outdoor
wrap with the thickness of his lightest ulster, or the heft of her
so-called winter suit with the weight of the outer garments which he
wears to business, and if you are yourself a man you will wonder why
she doesn't freeze stiff when the thermometer falls to the twenty-above
mark. Observe her in a ballroom that is overheated in the corners and
draughty near the windows, as all ballrooms are. Her neck and her
throat, her bosom and arms are bare. Her frock is of the filmiest
gossamer stuff; her slippers are paper thin, her stockings the sheerest
of textures, yet she doesn't sniff and her nose doesn't turn red and the
skin upon her exposed shoulders refuses to goose-flesh. She is the
marvel of the ages. She is neither too warm nor too cold; she is just
right. Consider now her male companion in his gala attire. One minute he
is wringing wet with perspiration; that is when he is dancing. The next
minute he is visibly congealing. That is because he has stopped to catch
his breath.

Why this difference between the sexes? The man is supposed to be the
hardier creature of the two, but he can't prove it. Of course there may
be something in the theory that when a woman feels herself to be smartly
dressed, an exaltation of soul lifts her far above realization of bodily
discomfort. But I make so bold as to declare that the real reason why
she is comfortable and he is not, lies in the fact that despite all
eccentricities of costume in which she sometimes indulges, Everywoman
goes about more rationally clad than Everyman does.

For the sake of comparing two horrible examples, let us take a woman
esteemed to