Page:Science ofDress194.png

194 after dinner. About fifty years ago elderly gentlemen usually wore a high, tight collar, reaching partly up the cheek, with a couple of cravats wound round; younger men wore also a high collar, and one silk cravat twice round. After 1848, similarly stiff collars were still worn; but the tie now was single. Then came the epoch of the low collar with the throat left free, and this fashion has ever since been maintained by some, although the tendency of late has been to revert to the bad old custom of obstructing the free movement of the muscles of the throat by walls of starched linen, which rasp the skin and spoil the voice. The sooner men take to a better way of clothing their chests and necks than with stiff linen shirt-fronts and collars the better; but for health's and reason's sake do not let us copy them in the present error of their ways.

Nothing is more becoming than lace in the neck, and if anything is wanted this should be used; or a fold of fine lawn just to show above the collar of the dress is very pretty, although, if the collar is of velvet, it is quite allowable not to wear even this. Instead of the high stiff collars worn for riding, I would also suggest that a fold of lawn, or of a white silk neckerchief, if nicely arranged, would look quite as well, and be infinitely more comfortable and healthy.

Coming now to the question of out-door clothing, I would call attention to the fact that tailor-made jackets are far preferable to the fashionable dolmans, which bind the arms down to the sides in a