Page:Americans and others.djvu/211

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The Temptation of Eve

good management they can be reduced to one and a half. He has never mastered, and apparently never will master, the exact shade of difference between a statement and a fact.

Women are, under most circumstances, even more readily deceived; but, in the matter of dress, they have walked the thorny paths of experience. They know the cruel cost of everything they wear,—a cost which in this country is artificially maintained by a high protective tariff,—and they are not to be cajoled by that delusive word "simplicity," being too well aware that it is, when synonymous with good taste, the consummate success of artists, and the crowning achievement of wealth. Some years ago there appeared in one of the English magazines an article entitled, "How to Dress on Thirty Pounds a Year. As a Lady. By a Lady." Whereupon "Punch" offered the following light-minded amendment: "How to Dress on

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