Page:Charleston • Irwin Faris • (1941).pdf/103

 “it was not the dress that counted, but what was in it”; many a print frock was more observed than silken array. Old hands say that the costumes adorning some of the Casino girls met with scanty approval from staid matrons, because leaving the wearers “about half-way out.” A reporter described one such dress as “a creation,” explaining that “a promising lode ran from neck to middle spine, and then petered out.” Its wearer when told that if her mother could see her in it, she would turn in her grave replied sweetly that “the dear would probably be glad to do so, after having lain so long in one position.”

The Charleston Herald stated in 1884 that in that year Charleston, for the first time, failed to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and quoted the fact as an indication of how dead the town had become.