Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/211



To dress well is a social duty. Every educated self-respecting woman is bound to clothe her person as neatly, as tastefully and becomingly as she can. But just as a virtue when carried to excess develops into a vice, so the art of dressing well, when allowed to overstep its legitimate uses and expenditure, easily runs into folly and madness. The reckless extravagance of women's dress at the present day is little short of criminal insanity. A feverish desire to outvie one another in the manner and make of their garments appears to possess every feminine creature whose lot in life places her outside positive penury. The inordinately wealthy, the normally rich, the well-to-do middle class and the shabby genteel are all equally infected by the same hysterical frenzy. And it is a frenzy which is humoured and encouraged on all sides by those who should have the sense, the intelligence and the foresight to realize the danger of such a tendency, and the misery to which in many cases it is surely bound to lead.

Latterly there have been certain growlings and mutterings of discontent from husbands who have had to pay certain unexpectedly long bills for their wives' "creations in costume"—but, as a matter of fact, it is really the men who are chiefly to blame for the wicked waste of money they afterwards resent