even painful, those garments may be. Hence she meets the attack of the dress reformer with the reply, "I'll allow that your arguments are very plausible; it does seem as if these things were wrong, but I don't feel any inconvenience from them, so they really must be all right."
In point of fact, this is a good reason why average men and women cannot understand the object of the contention of dress reformers—they like that to which they have grown accustomed. Of course sensible people of all ages can and do make modifications in their dress, which render it both comfortable and healthy, and this is done quietly and without attracting any public attention. But if dress reform is to effect any material good for the community, it must be radical. It is no good to oppose the iron rule of custom; we must strike at the root of it, and begin with the children, for, as a reviewer of my former writings on the subject justly remarked, "it is in the hands of the mothers of to-day to effect for the coming generation that revolution in toilette against which the belles of to-day so stoutly or so scornfully array themselves." To put the matter simply, we must begin at the beginning, instead of at the end, as the so-called reformers have tried to do.
If we compare the mortality of the young of the lower animals with that of children, we find that there is no animal which loses its young in so large a proportion as women do. Is this not a disgrace to civilization? Reason is justly considered to be a higher phase of mind than instinct, yet we find the
