new shape,—cast into the flames, or thrown to wild Biddies to be worn to pieces.
Diogenes. The great M. Comte, with whose works you, Hipparchia, are no doubt familiar, divides philosophy into the three stages of Theological, Metaphysical, and Positive. This general theorem he completes by particular applications,—to costume among others. In this he distinguishes the three stages of Tattooing (including paint), Frippery, and Clothes. Man has reached the third stage, he says; woman is in the second, and not entirely out of the first.
Hipparchia. Everything about a woman's dress is uncomfortable. Everything is pinned on and false. There is nothing real but the trouble and the expense; and women whose love of appearances exceeds their incomes must work hard with their own needles. But they undergo it all without a murmur,—I may say, with pleasure.
Diogenes. "For 't is their nature to," as I remarked just now. Women are compounds of plain-sewing and make-believe, daughters of Sham and of Hem. I consider dress an epidemic disease,—a moral cholera that originates in the worst quarters of Paris. Every ship that comes from those regions is infected with French trollopism, and should be quarantined and fumigated until every trace of the contagious novelty has been expurgated.
Hipparchia. Could a stranger, ignorant of our customs, suppose it possible that beings capable of reason would habitually go out of a winter evening less clad by half than during the day? I say nothing of the propriety or good taste of this fashion. When Eve ate of the apple, she knew she was naked. I have often thought, as I looked at her dancing daughters, that another bite would be of service to them: it might open their eyes to their uncovered condition.
Diogenes. Let us put that reform down among those we mean to carry out last; unless, indeed, the neck of age commits the fault, then, I confess, I should like to complain to the Board of Health and have the nuisance abated. There is nothing sadder than to look at dressy old things, who have reached the frozen latitudes beyond fifty, and who persist in appearing in the airy costume of the tropics. They appear to think, as Goldsmith says, that they can conceal their age by exposing their persons.
Hipparchia. Their case is hopeless, I fear: we must teach sounder ideas on all these subjects to the young.
Aristippus. You have tried it already. Did not a wise woman come from the West preaching to her sisters that one of their lost rights was, to dress like men? What did Bloomerism amount to? A few forlorn creatures shortened their petticoats a few inches, adopted most of the ugly in a man's attire with none of the practical, and retained the follies of a woman's dress without the taste. Their shoes were neither stouter nor larger. They wore a thing on their heads more unsightly than a bonnet, and no better a protection against sun or rain. They made their jackets and their trouserettes of the same flimsy stuffs as before, and sprinkled an unusual quantity of incongruous and unsuitable trimmings over all. Luckily they have disappeared, and now are probably devoting their energies to some other right that does less violence to woman's nature. Do you suppose that you will be listened to when you preach from the text, "Take no thought for your body what ye shall put on"? How many lady free-thinkers in fashionable doctrines do you know? I see a superfluous ribbon even in your cap, Hipparchia; and, if I mistake not, your magisterial skirts are expanded by a wirework cage.
Diogenes. Men say knowledge is power; women think dress is power. Look at a woman who is certain that she is well dressed,—"the correct thing,"—how she walks along with stately steps, head well up, parasol held with two fingers at the present, and skirts expanding luxuriantly behind
