Full Beards and Red Petticoats

1886

People who can remember back of the civil war must know that shaving was almost universal in those days, and that when the contrary practice began it so agitated the country that the newspapers were filled with leading articles on "The Beard Movement" and "The Mustache Movement."

Probably most of our older readers can remember when they first saw a preacher in the pulpit wearing a mustache and the shock it gave them. It was, if possible worse than the other sacrilegious act of bringing fiddles into the choir.

The event which started the beard movement was the visit of the wonderful Hungarian orator, Louis Kossuth, who was extremely handsome and picturesque in the full beard and mustache and soft felt hat with curling feather. He introduced the soft hat as well as the mustache, and as he traveled all over the country in 1854 and 1855 and spoke every where to great crowds whom he powerfully impressed with the masterly English which he had learned from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Webster's dictionary while he lay in an Austrian prison he advertised both his hat and his hair very widely. It would seem rather trivial nowadays for the newspapers to gravely discuss the "beard movement," but that was not the most trivial matter with which the newspapers of thirty years ago busied themselves.

Prominent among their themes shortly before the war was "the Red Petticoat Movement." It became the sensible fashion for women to wear red flannel petticoats instead of the white cotton one which had been the universal wear before. This was an innovation that worried the newspapers seriously. Many of them held the red garment to be, if not actually immodest, at least bold and daunting, and a symbol of the degeneracy of the age. Charles Mackay, then visiting in the country, published an earnest poetical appeal for "the white, the modest petticoat," which went the round of the press. — Buffalo Express.


1858

The Red Petticoat and the White

Charles Mackay sends the following lines, on an absorbing subject, to the public press:

Oh, the red, the flaunting petticoat,
That courts the eye of day,
That loves to flare and be admired,
And blinks from far away;
It may delight the roving sight,
And charm the fancy free,
But if its bearer's half as bold,
I'll pass and let her be;—
With her red, her flaunting petticoat,
She's not the girl for me!

But the white, the modest petticoat,
As pure as drifted snow,
That shuns the gaze in crowded ways,
Where follies come and go.
It stirs the primrose on its path,
Or daisy on the lea;
And if the bearer's like the garb,
How beautiful is she!
With her white, her modest petticoat,
Oh, she's the girl for me!

They Do Say

Massachusetts, 1916

That all the world loves to josh a lover.

That the lunch cart boys take their meals at all hours.

That the average messenger boy doesn't look like a runaway.

That taking all in all it is just as well dreams don't come true.

That a change of scene is the only thing to cure the vacation fever.

That some women show wonderful ingenuity in distributing an obese figure.

That some girls can be modest even though their skirts are short and full.

That sometimes 'tis love's young dream and other times it is a nightmare.

That while tenements are in great demand rents have been creeping upward.

That there's not much difference between taking a jitney and taking a chance.

That postal cards from El Paso, Texas, show that there are many fine buildings in that city.

That the fellow who hangs around looking for a political job ought to get life at hard labor.

That a few of our school teachers might with advantage have stayed in school a little longer.

That the fellow with the right kind of civic pride will not throw papers in the streets or parks.

That the price of meat is practically prohibitive for the poor man with a large family of small children.

That life is full of annoyances, including the man who comes in and presents a letter of introduction.

That some widows' soon wish they could take back all the mournful things they said after the funeral.

That the reason a woman always loves the sweetheart she didn't marry Is because she didn't marry him.

That there should be a statute compelling the gossipy man to wear petticoats.

That frequently the man who thinks. he knows it all doesn't know enough to keep still.

That while we wouldn't give our kingdom for a Ford, we'd consider one at a bargain.

That every time a fellow sees a girl driving an automobile he gets out of the way.

That Joe says there isn't any use of washing the windows when it looks like rain.

That the hens are beginning to get that independent look they wear when eggs are going up.

That Jack and Jill went up the hill to feed the little deer, and when they fed the little dear he acted very queer.

That there is a certain contradiction between downcast eyes and striped stockings — when they belong to the same girl.

That sick babies will gain more by one day in the woods than by taking any amount of medicine in the stifling heat of the city.

That a great many people who try to raise vegetables in their gardens show a woeful lack of skill in handling corn, potatoes, tomatoes and lettuce.

—The Lowell Sun, Lowell, Massachusetts, July 15, 1916, p. 4.