Part 100 (1/2)
”'But,' I said, 'do you not adjust your dress in this way on purpose to give us a chance to look?'
”She was greatly shocked at my way of putting it.
”'Well,' I said, 'this a.s.surance is perfectly stunning. You strip yourselves, go to a public party, parade yourselves for hours in a glare of gas-light, saying to the crowd, ”Look here, gentlemen,” and then you are shocked because we put your unmistakable actions into words.'
”In discussing this subject before an audience of ladies in this city (Boston), the other evening, I said, 'Ladies, suppose I had entered this hall with my arms and bust bare; what would you have done? You would have made a rush for the door, and, as you jostled against each other in hurrying out, you would have exclaimed to each other, ”O, the unconscionable scallawag!” May I ask if it is not right that we should demand of you as much modesty as you demand of us?' But you exclaim, 'Custom! it is the custom, and fas.h.i.+on is everything.'” Again the author says,--
”This exposure of the naked bosom before men belongs not to the highest type of Christian civilization, but to those dark ages when women sought nothing higher than the gratification of the pa.s.sions of man, and were content to be mere slaves and toys.
”Boston contains its proportion of the refined women of the country. We have here a few score of the old families, inheriting culture and wealth, and who can take rank with the best. A matron who knows their habits a.s.sures me that she never saw a member of one of those families in 'low neck and short sleeves.'
”In the future free and Christian America, the very dress of women will proclaim a high, pure womanhood.... We shall then discard the costumes devised by the dissolute capitals of Europe.
”What a strange spectacle we witness in America to-day! Free, brave American women hold out to the world the Bible of social, political, and religious freedom, and anon we see them down on their knees, waiting the arrival of the latest steamer from France, to learn how they may dress their bodies for the next month.”
Well, he does not censure ladies in the above manner all through; but yet, in a most earnest and interesting way he divulges the most startling truths, and even very young misses are delighted with the whole argument.
”Why, it's just like a story,” exclaimed my twelve-year-old Katie on reading it.
What Dr. Lewis objects to on the score of immodesty, I also oppose on the ground of unhealthfulness. The idea of preventing or curing the laryngitis, or consumption, in a lady, when there is nothing but gauze, or a bit of ribbon and a galvanized bosom pin, between her neck and the cold and changeable atmosphere of the north or east, is ridiculously absurd. No doctors or doctors' pectorals can save such. ”High necks,” warm flannels, or make your wills.
HOW AND WHAT WE SHOULD BREATHE.
It would disgust the reader if I should enter into the details of telling him what people--respectable people, even, in nice houses--breathe over.
Air is life. The purer the air, the purer the life-stream that courses through our hearts. You cannot get too much of it. Take it in freely. Have only pure air in your houses, in your sleeping-rooms and cellars.
Particularly see that the children have the freedom of the air, day and night, at home, at school, everywhere. It is free--costs nothing!
THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET.
”I dwell amid the city, And hear the flow of souls; I do not hear the several contraries, I do not hear the separate tone that rolls In art or speech.
”For pomp or trade, for merry-make or folly, I hear the confidence and sum of each, And what is melancholy.
Thy voice is a complaint, O crowded city, The blue sky covering thee, like G.o.d's great pity.”
”Heaven bless the freedom of the park,” has exclaimed a child of song; and he might also have invoked the same blessing upon ”the freedom of the street.” The street is free to all; to high and low, young and old, rich and poor. It recognizes no distinctions or castes; it is the very expressiveness of democracy.
The child of fas.h.i.+on, arrayed in silks, ribbons, and furbelows; the child of penury and want, in rags, filth, and semi-nakedness; the shaver of notes and the shaver of faces; the college professor and the chiffonier, all mingle in common on the street. Now walking side by side, now brus.h.i.+ng past each other, now stopping to look at the same cause of excitement, now each jostled into the gutter. No distinction in wealth, birth, or intellect is recognized; no one dare attempt to restrict the freedom of the thoroughfare, and none dare say to another, ”Stand aside, for I am better than thou.”
The little boy trundles his hoop against the s.h.i.+ns of the thoughtful student; the little girl knocks the spectacles from the nose of the man of science with her rope, while the preacher runs against an awning-post to make way for a red-faced nurse with a willow carriage; the antiquated apple woman, and the child with its huge chunk of bread and b.u.t.ter, sit on the curb; the painter digs the end of his ladder rather uncomfortably into some pursy old gentleman's stomach; while the sweep, with the soot trembling upon his eyelashes, strolls along as independently and leisurely as the dandy in tights, and with the sweeter consciousness that he is doing something for the public good.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK.]
The street is a world in miniature, a Vanity Fair in motion, a s.h.i.+fting panorama of society, painted with the pencil of folly and fancy. It is the only plane upon which society, ”the field which men sow thick with friends.h.i.+ps,” meets on a common level. It does not flaunt in aristocracy, and never dares to be pretentious.
”KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTHS CLOSED.”
There's true philosophy in the above saying of a wise _savant_. But there is more wisdom in the latter clause than he even dreamed of in his philosophy.
The Book informs us that G.o.d breathed the breath of life (air) into man's _nostrils_. Nothing is more injurious, save continually breathing foul air, than the habit of breathing through the mouth. Keep the mouth closed.