tform oratory and had its organ. Why is it
not worn to-day? No woman who has ever masqueraded in man's dress or
donned it for climbing will ever forget the freedom of it. Yet the
only woman in the Christian world who ever wore it at once naturally
and with that touch of coquetry which is necessary to carry it off, as
far as this writer's personal observation goes, was Madame Dieulafoy,
and Madame Dieulafoy was protected by the French government and an
exclusive circle.

Bloomers proved too much for even the courage of dear Miss Anthony.
For two years she wore them, and then with tears and lamentations
resigned them. In that resignation Miss Anthony paid tribute,
unconsciously no doubt, to something deeper than she ever grasped in
the woman question. Her valiant soul met its master in her own nature,
but she did not recognize it. She abandoned her convenient and
becoming costume because of prejudice, she said. What other prejudice
ever dismayed her! She thrived on fighting them; she met her woman's
soul, and did not know it!

But from the experiments and blunders and travail of some of these
noble and early militants over the dress question, has come, as I have
said, our present useful, and probably permanent type of street suit.
In this particular the American woman has achieved a genuine
democratization of her clothes. The experience of the last two
years--fashion's open attempt to make the walking suit useless by
tightening the skirts, and bizarre by elaborate decorations, has in
the main failed. Here, then, is a standard established, and
established on one of the great principles of sensible clothing, and
that is fitness. It shows that the true attack on the tyranny and
corruption of clothes lies in the establishment of principles.

These principles are, briefly:--

The fitness of dress depends upon the occasion.

The beauty of dress depends upon line and color.

The ethics of dress depends upon quality and the relation of cost to
one's means.

In time we may get into the heads of all women, rich and poor, that an
open-work stocking and low shoe for winter street wear are as unfit as
they all concede a trailing skirt to be. In time we may even hope to
train the eye until it recognizes the difference between a beautiful
and a grotesque form, between a flowing and a jagged line. In time we
may restore the sense of quality, which our grandmothers certainly
had, and which almost every European peasant brings wit