Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/100

92 arrangement. And it is much easier for a man to see faults in a lady’s dress than to give directions for dressing faultlessly.

As we have just said, we do not feel competent to give particular directions here, and therefore shall not attempt to do so. We refer to dress, in this place, merely for the purpose of making one or two rather general remarks on the subject.

As in almost every thing else in this world, people are very apt to run into opposite extremes in the matter of dress. While we have one class of persons who seem to think of nothing else but dress, and who load themselves with gay clothing and ornaments until they appear ridiculous in the eyes of sensible people, there is another class that as unwisely reject all ornaments, and array themselves in garments of the dullest hue. In this, as in all other things, the happy medium is the true one. In order to attain this happy medium, some attention must be paid to the end for which dress is regarded. If a love of admiration, and a mere fondness for appearing in gay attire, alone prompt a woman to give attention to dress, she will be almost sure to overstep the bounds of good sense and good taste. The hand of either pride or vanity always shows itself in a woman’s dress, in spite of every effort to hide it.