Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/178

 houses, were reduced to a minimum. There was no overtaxing of the strength of the inmates in the care of rubbish as slightly ornamental as it is useful, fit emblem of the mental furnishing of the tasteless idiots that brought it into vogue.

Dressmaking, that other source of female slavery, had become, at least in its present developments, a lost art. Dresses not being made to display the figure, their cut and make-up was entirely a matter of machinery. As a preoccupation, dress did not take up more of a woman's time than is now devoted to the matter by a man having a decent regard to his outward appearance. It must not, however, be supposed that the wives and the daughters of the tenth chiliad were indifferent to their personal appearance. Their toilet was brief, simply because their garments were so sensibly devised, that each was put on as easily, and required as little arrangement, as a mantle. No one, seeing the graceful folds and harmonious coloring of the feminine attire of that period, would regret the gaudy frippery, the costly and elaborate combination of shreds and patches, that now disfigures more frequently than it adorns.

Once. while turning over the volumes contained in my host's library, I came upon an old author of the fifty-sixth century. Some remarks of his on this subject struck me as being not so far from the truth, considering the prejudices of his age, and the great remoteness of the period of which he was treating.

"The leading characteristics of the feminine costume of this period,"—the writer was discoursing of the closing centuries of the second chiliad,—"its general incle-