She Rustled

1901

A London paper says that C. T. Yerkes, the American street railway magnate, now in London, recently received the following letter from a young woman:

"Dear Mr. Yerkes — I have seen by the papers how rich you are, and also I have seen your picture, which looks kind. So I thought I would tell you that my parents are poor and depriving themselves of many comforts in order to give me a good education. Among my school friends there is a gymnastic club, of which I am a member, and all the girls wear silk skirts, and it gives me the horrors to feel I can't have one when I hear the fascinating rustle of their petticoats. Would you send me $5 to buy one? Yours," etc.

Mr. Yerkes received the unique epistle from his secretary and, to the latter's astonishment, exclaimed: "Send her the money. It will give more pleasure than if invested in any other way." The money was sent, and the acknowledgment was as follows: "Dear Mr. Yerkes — Thanks so much for the money. I invested it and can now rustle with the others."

You Ought To Have a Wheel Hoe

1917

A wheel hoe is the gardener's best friend; with it one man can do as much work in two hours as he can in six with the old-fashioned common hoe. It saves laborious stooping, makes the work easier and does it better. These hoes have several attachments such as drills, cultivators and different-sized hoes, making it suitable for crops of all kinds and sizes. If a man is too lazy to attend to his own garden, his wife will find the use of the wheel hoe very comforting.


His Dress

When a girl falls in love with a young man she wishes he would wear some other kind of necktie.


Handicapped

"Ernest, were you looking through the keyhole last night at your sister and me?" "Honest, I wasn't. Mother was in the way."

Fashion Changes — Women Drift From Womanly Ideals

1910

By Stella B. Ames

The advent of the immodest gown came with the appearance of the peekaboo waists some five years ago and since then women have been vying with each other, seemingly, to see to what extent they could go in displaying their forms. Evening gowns have been opened clear down the back and down as low in front as is possible. The display in New York during the grand opera season, for instance, is absolutely horrifying.

The directoire gown came into style, and although it was not carried out to the letter, yet the spirit of the gown was carried out shamefully. Even though the slit up the side has not been worn open, the skirts have been so disposed that the entire outline of the body has been shown plainly.

The Dutch necks carried the peekaboo waists one step farther and the short skirts which have been worn the last two years have been affected by middle aged women who are willing to show a good portion of their ankles.

Even the bathing suits have been becoming more and more immodest. Fifty years ago the bloomers were worn clear down to the ankles and the skirts came way below the knees. Now neither the bloomer or the skirt quite reaches the knee.

I do not believe that most women consciously set out to dress immodestly. Most of them just blindly follow the fashions. A little honest thought, however, will show that women as a class have drifted very far away from the womanly ideals which should prompt all women. I believe that we should combine to bring about a common sense revolution in dress.

Mrs. Humphrey's Strong Feelings About Fashion

1911

Editorial Zingers

The truth is that the love of dress is, next after drink and gambling, one of the curses of our country. -- Mrs. Humphrey.

The Boston young woman who worked eight years on her trousseau must have had unusual, though not well founded, faith in the stability of the styles.

A Montreal doctor recently contributed a pint of his own blood to save the life of a patient. Some doctors seem to be actuated by a sincere desire to cure.

The autocrats of fashion may succeed in making women wear the ugly Turkish "harem" stress, but no autocrat now living will ever succeed in shutting women up.

"I know not where I am," cried a poetess in one of the magazines. English critics of American literature will wonder why she did not say: "I know not where I am at."

An English paper announces that Americans lack the sense of humor. That sounds like the argument of the man who satisfies himself by exclaiming: "You're another!"

A Canadian highbrow tells us that the temperature seven and a half miles above the earth is 90 degrees below zero. Let this be a warning to builders of skyscrapers.

Beaded Ornamentations Are Popular

1914

Beads are very much in vogue at present and are being extensively used for decoration in all sorts of ways. Old fashioned strings originally intended for necklaces or fan chains have been broken and rethreaded in new forms. In a great many instances the alterations are novel.

Beads have recently made their appearance as decoration upon evening shoes, and a pretty pair are those which are designed with conventionalized flowers carried out in iridescent beads. These are stitched very closely upon net and made in a large variety of colors so that they will match any shade of evening dress.

The fronts of the silk evening stockings are also embroidered with beads, the colorings of which blend harmoniously with the rest of the costume. They are sewed widely apart and can be made to have the appearance of softly glittering dewdrops. If it is wished to carry this form of ornamentation throughout the whole costume beads may be artistically arranged and sewed on the sash ends of the gown, and, provided that they are not placed too closely together, they will always give a very dainty finish to an evening gown.

Then there are the bead bags with which our grandmothers were delighted, and some of the reticules of this period which now remain are to be classed among the few beautiful specimens displayed in the handiwork of an inartistic generation.

For some years these bead bags were ignored and thrust aside as so much rubbish. Then some one discovered their loveliness, and this led to a general revival of them.

They were brought out from old drawers, trunks and lumber rooms and very soon appeared in all the shop windows marked at fabulous prices. Now they are difficult to obtain, and it is seldom that they can be picked up at little antique shops for a dollar or so, as in former days.

Frills for Gentlemen

1914

Dr. Montessori, the famous woman educator, in discussing the injustices imposed upon her sex by man, says: "It enrages me to see how men sacrifice beauty to comfort in their dress. They make no sacrifices that they may be beautiful to us, but we abandon all comfort that we may be beautiful in their eyes."

The important question here is not one of deed but of purpose. Dr. Montessori, a most learned and representative woman, says that women dress for men. While man would not flatter himself to make such a statement without high authority, his failure to appreciate the complimentary feminine attitude is undoubtedly due rather to ignorance than to contempt of woman. Surely we are all sorry that Dr. Montessori is enraged at us and would hate to see a general strike on the part of those who furnish us with most of the joys of life.

What can we do. then, if we are to appease Madame Montessori? Must we grow long hair, dress in knee breeches, silks and laces, wear tickly plumes and stickly hatpins, carry vanity bags and powder our noses?

Of course we would rather do a great deal than to permit the milk of feminine love to sour against us, but there seems to be a crossed wire somewhere. Can it be possible that men have been buying big hats, fine apparel, cruel hatpins and scratchy quills to please themselves rather than their wives? If so, what extravagant fools we masculine mortals be!

—Waterloo Evening Courier, Waterloo, Iowa, Jan. 1, 1914, p. 4.

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!

Modesty of Slit Skirts Debated; New Fashions Give Sight to Blind

1913

Daughters' Dress Care of Mothers

Denver Pedagogue Says Parents Can Check X-ray Gowns and Slit Skirts on Girls

DENVER, Aug. 30. — Superintendent of Schools William H. Miley expressed the utmost satisfaction today at the stand the Mothers' congress has taken against transparent and slit skirts for school girls. He felt so sure the mothers can accomplish more than the school department officials in the direction of discouraging immodesty of dress on their daughter's part, he said, that he does not even consider it necessary for the school heads to issue any orders on the subject.

Some well known Denver women were not so sure, however, that the wearing of the new styles of skirts can be prevented by the means adopted and one or two went so far as to hint that the new skirts critics are inclined to be old fogyish.

"How can children be disposed to moderation in dress unless their mothers display it?" asked Mrs. Henry Hershey, a prominent member of the Mothers' congress. "I hope, too, that the congress will move with delicacy and tact. There is an idea that old styles are more moral than new simply because they have been worn for a long time."

"It isn't the display or concealment of the body that constitutes modesty or immodesty," said Mrs. Dora Phelps Buell, also a leading member of the congress. "And I am sorry to see the mothers beginning in the wrong way. The moment a woman or a girl wears a gown shows her figure there is a howl that the effect is immoral. The world has gone mad over externals."

—The La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, WI, Aug. 30, 1913, p. 6.


Slit Skirt Makes "Blind" Man See

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 30. — M. J. McCarty, "fake" blind man, who was sentenced to serve 100 days on the municipal farm because he gazed for thirty seconds on the aperture in a slit skirt, was not at all downcast today.

"Believe me," said McCarty, "believe me, it was worth it."

McCarty was wearing a "Help the Blind" sign around his neck when a pretty brunette, with a skirt slit to the knee, passed and dropped a dime in his cup. J. W. West, a clerk, saw McCarty turn and stare after the girl. West stared too, and then he called a policeman.

—The La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, WI, Aug. 30, 1913, p. 10.

When Women Should Drink

1903

It Is Better If They Leave Ardent Spirits Alone

That many society women drink ardent spirits, and sometimes to excess, is a well known fact. They have many opportunities for indulgence in this form of dissipation that the men do not imagine exist. Of course, the society woman does not "drink" in the sense in which the hag in the slum and the bibulous cook do. She is too careful of her sylphlike figure and of her porcelain skin to indulge in much champagne, and she has enough to make her nervous about whisky, but what she does take is a sip of liquor here and a tumblerful of Madeira there and a drop or two of cognac in her coffee after luncheon, and maybe a cocktail to give her an appetite for dinner. This all counts up at the end of the day, and after a while madam feels the need of her little fillips and encouragers in order to enable her to carry out the exacting routine of her busy social life. She doesn't realize that she drinks. But stimulate she certainly does.

Living as she does in an electric atmosphere and under highly unwholesome and artificial conditions, with nerves always strung to the highest state of tension and ever looking out for some new form of excitement, it is almost inevitable that artificial stimulants should be reported to in order to enable the jaded human organization to meet the excessive demands that are made upon it. From morning until night, and often through the night, as well, there is one long round of worry and excitement.

The demands of fashionable society are so exacting that even the simplest things become either fatiguing or exciting. The mere act of dressing, for instance, which has to be repeated several times in the day, makes a severe call upon the strength of a delicate woman, even if she has a clever maid to assist her, and after having been laced into her armor of satin and lace and had her head coiffed elaborately she is too tired to go out without having recourse to a nip of cognac or cordial to brace her up and give her courage to face the world with the stereotyped smile of amiability expected from her.

Then there are the ordeals of shopping and trying on. Standing on high heels and in a tightly-laced corset — straight-front hygienists notwithstanding — to have a heavy velvet gown fitted in a superheated room is an ordeal that would cause most men to topple over and faint. But the poor fashionable lady has to stand it and perhaps drive off to pay a half dozen calls after she has been dismissed by the dressmaker. But the dressmaker knows the psychological moment when the customer is just on the verge of fainting or hysterics, and comes forward with an offer of a glass of Benedictine or the "finest drop" of green Chartreuse, and her fair customer finds it so grateful and comforting that on her next visit she looks out for it as a matter of course, and in a short time starts a bottle in her own room, if she has not already done so.

The high-sounding names of the various expensive liqueurs have such a distinguished ring about them that it never occurs to the lady who is consuming them that she "drinks." Some women delude themselves still further by drinking eau de cologne or some other perfume on the assumption that a pick-me-up of this kind is quite harmless, whereas, if anything, it is more deadly than the other.

Of course, it is not suggested for moment that all women who have recourse to this kind of thing go the length of making themselves intoxicated. But they do often get as far as acquiring a color and sparkle in the eye and a style of conversation, all of which are quite foreign to their real nature, and the effect in the long run is bound to be unmanageable nerves, if nothing worse.

The Beautiful Frills of Fashion in Great Vogue

1903

Many of the long evening gloves are inset with lace insertion.

Colored laces are having great vogue, not only the laces dyed to match gowns, but coarse filet darned in patterns in blues, reds or browns.

Some of the new dotted silk mousseline veils have gaily embroidered borders, two or three inches deep, in the popular strawberry design.

The hats will bear fruits in and out of season. One supports a spray of small oranges, another is a strawberry bed, a third is luscious with cherries.

Handkerchiefs exactly matching the frock in color are a present fad and some women go to the length of having kerchiefs dyed to match each of their gowns.

Smart turnovers of the collar and cuff protector variety are of white pique, with deep but narrow and very sharp points finished with a heavy edge of embroidery.

An attractive round gold bracelet is set at intervals with round pieces of turquoise matrix, six of these on one bracelet, each piece being set in a fancy rim of gold extending beyond the lines of the bracelet.

Jeweled belts in turquoise and steel emerald and jet and other combinations are among the accessories that give a special touch of elegance to the costume, but their price places them beyond the purse limits of the average well-dressed woman.

There is a pronounced vogue for evening robes of white, black or deep cream guipure lace with under slip of place silk or satin. The lace comes in circular form, all ready to be worn as a skirt and requires no trimming, the handsome border answering all purposes of garniture. For the bodice an allover design in guipure to match the skirt may be used. The usual trimming is a garland of flowers and foliage outlining the décolletage.

One bride of the winter wore an original wedding dress, the skirt being heavily trimmed with insertion of Tambour lace put over a strong silver tissue that gleamed through very effectively. The train was of lace with a wide hem and insertion of silver embroidery, and the bodice, which was trimmed around the best and in a point to the waist with similar silver embroidery, was finished with a yoke of silver tissue and lace.

India Feels the Effect of Woman's Forward March

1895

Dropping Old Forms

In an interesting article lately written Mrs. Ernest Hart says: "I had the pleasure of meeting a large number of Brahmo-Somaj ladies in Calcutta and seeing a great deal of them. They are highly educated, many of the younger women having been trained in England, and some of them having passed the ordeal of university examinations. At home they live like English women.

"My husband and I were entertained at parties at their houses and I attended the service of their church on Sunday. They interested me deeply, and I sincerely trust that the acceptance of an exalted faith and a high civilization will not separate them in sympathy from their Hindu sisters, of whom they are the natural leaders in matters of reform, education and in the bettering of the position of women in India.

"In the Brahmo-Somaj church in Calcutta there is a screened gallery where sit unobserved ladies who have not yet made up their minds to 'come out' of the zenana. The step is a great one for them to take, and even when the husband and father approve, there is much hesitancy. Some women have been influenced by Christian teaching, others by the doctrines of the Monotheistic faith, but I was informed in Calcutta that every year ladies come out of the zenana and join no church. I met several of these ladies; they had a self-assertive manner which was not pleasing.

"The ladies of the Brahmo-Somaj wear a graceful dress. Over a close-fitting bodice and straight skirt, the soft silk or muslin sari hangs in folds and is gathered up on one shoulder. Out of doors a low bonnet or toque is worn, which is frequently trimmed with gold lace.

"There are a large number of native women studying medicine, midwifery and nursing in the medical schools of India. Of the two hundred and twenty- four women returned as studying for the year 1893 no less than one hundred and thirty-six are native women. Among these are eighteen Hindus, twenty-eight Bengalis, sixty-five native Christians, seven Karens, nine Burmese and one Shan." — London Queen.