Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/214

 in zig-zags, connected together with shaded pink gloria ribbons arranged in waves and wreaths. This is repeated on the low corsage and on the long drooping sleeves of the high bodice.

"A richer toilette is of white Liberty silk, with a flounce of magnificent Brussels lace festooned by leaves of the chestnut, formed of white satin wrought in iris beads and silver on white tulle. The whole gown is strewn with like leaves of graduating sizes, and the low corsage has a berthe of Brussels lace ornamented with smaller chestnut leaves as are also the sleeves." And so on, in unlimited bursts of enthusiasm.

I cannot say I am in the least sorry when "modistes" who 'create' costumes at forty, fifty and even one hundred and two hundred guineas per gown, are mulcted of some of their unlawful profits by defaulting creditors. In nine cases out of ten they richly deserve it. They are rightly punished, when they accept, with fulsome flattery and servile obsequiousness a "title" as sufficient guarantee for credit, and in the end find out that Her Grace the Duchess, or Miladi the Countess is perhaps more wickedly reckless and unprincipled than any plain Miss, or Mrs. ever born, and that these grandes dames frequently make use of both rank and position to cheat their tradespeople systematically. The tradespeople are entirely to blame for trusting them, and this is daily and continuously proved. But the touching crook-knee'd worship of mere social rank still remains an ingredient of the mercantile nature,—it is inborn and racial,—a kind of microbe in the blood generated there in old feudal times, when, all over the world, pedlars humbly sought