for it raised a question of great importance, as far as the health of girls is concerned.
As long as fashion demands that Court and evening dresses should be made low in the neck, and with little or nothing in the way of sleeves, of course there will be many whose position in life is such that they are obliged to conform to this custom, however injurious it may be; and there are many others who will conform to the custom, not because they are obliged to do so, but because they like to copy their superiors in social rank.
The wearing of low-necked dresses is not a modern custom, nor is its condemnation of modern development. A French, writer in the middle of the fifteenth century makes the following remark: "By detestable vanity, ladies of rank now cause their robes to be made so low in the breast, and so open on the shoulders, that we may see nearly the whole bosom, and much of their shoulders and necks, and much below, down their backs." But the ladies of rank were then, and are now, greatly in the minority, compared to, the mass of women who are in sufficiently easy circumstances to be able to pay attention to their dress; and to all those who do not feel themselves bound by their social position to wear low dresses in the evening, I would say, wear your dresses as elegant and as ornamental as you can afford to, have them trimmed in the neck, if you like, to look as if they were cut low, but do not have your neck and arms bare—for this is the cause not only of colds and consequent debility, but when there is the slightest
