tennial, 1876, had seen once, or twice perhaps, a few bronze monuments, possibly a single gallery of poor and very proper paintings, and had probably never seen a nude statue in his life. The cultivation of the eye to enjoy symmetry and untrammeled grace has come chiefly through dramatic art in this country. As the public became accustomed to really beautiful women on the stage, the tightly corseted, flat-chested, thickhipped figure, encased in mosaic clothing from the ears to the toes, began to look ugly.

The dress of the fashionable woman, too, has been revolutionized by the artistic ideal-a movement in which actresses have set the model and led the way. In the pursuit of novelty and to enhance her own personal charm, each actress has compelled the dressmakers-educated by the French fashion-plate-to devise new and ever more graceful draperies, and more exquisite combinations of color; until now the whole field of Oriental and European art is studied in pursuit of fresh ideas.

The new idea, to be sure, when once offered for admiration on the stage, is quickly snatched up by manufacturers and designers, and usually exaggerated, if not perverted, into some monstrous travesty of style. But at the swift pace of modern changes in fashion, the most extreme, although it is the first to be adopted by persons of

crude taste, is also the first to be supplanted by another. And, owing to the enormous variations produced in any one season in a single fashion, the various grades of taste, from crude to highly refined, will find satisfaction.

But the most conspicuous contribution of the stage to the emancipation of women lies in its liberation of legs and torso. Good legs are an asset to a chorus girl, and, the city population having become accustomed to seeing them unashamed at the theater, is no longer shocked at a moderate display of ankles on the street. The corset, worn originally for the distortion of the body to make its sex characters more conspicuous, became conventionalized in this exaggerated style. The fashion-plate figure admired in the last century was truly hideous-as far from flexibility and grace as the form of the lady of the Civil War period was from that of the Laughing Bacchante. But stage beauties, as a mere matter of business, have demanded innumerable variations, which have stimulated the corsetière to devise models for mitigating the most imperfect figures. The straight-front corset, an invention for distributing the abdominal flesh, has, in ten years, revolutionized the ideas of every country woman in America, as to what a "good figure" should be. Thousands of women have seen Madame Sara Bernhardt, when long past middle age, play

L'Aiglon, the part of a youth of nineteen; and many more thousands read the interviews in which she explained how she kept her youthful figure by muscular activity and hygienic living. Such examples, and the industrious careers of a large number of actresses at the present day, are having an astonishing reaction upon the physique and dress of young women of the domestic type.

In addition to the correction and cultivation of taste the stage has had an incalculable influence upon the standards of health among women. The actress, the dancer, and the prima donna must have, before all talent, strength to endure the training and the hardships of her profession. However sensual and violent her temper may be, to win success she must deny her appetites and work-work incredibly hard. With the neverceasing curiosity of the general public regarding the lives of stage people, these facts have become known, and in their dissemination have educated every stage-struck girl as well as many feeble

amateurs.

The modification of religious dogma, the discoveries of science and their application to common life, the development of dramatic art, and the practice of physical exercise-these and other less important influences are the first steps toward separating physical beauty from its exclusive association with sensual images. Health and

beauty are becoming legitimate aims for the enrichment of life, as well as for the elevation of the race. Scientific discovery and medical skill are emancipating women from the enervating complaints once thought inherent in femaleness, but due in fact to constricting conditions of life, to over-breeding, and to the contamination of venereal diseases. Physical training, the development of the body by systematic activity, which has only in the last quarter of the century become acceptable, is doing away with the prudery in which girls were once reared, and preparing them for a kind of motherhood no longer blindly instinctive, but adequate and intelligent. Beauty is no longer merely "vain," nor favor inevitably deceitfuland the fruit of her hands shall yet praise her.

CHAPTER VII

THE PURSUIT OF DRESS

"We have plucked up a little spirit and have even signed a sort of feeble declaration of independence against our old enemies, French fashions and perfect uniformity in dress. How well I remember a certain spring season in my childhood, when every woman between the age of fourteen and forty wore a yellow straw bonnet trimmed with green ribbon on the outside and pink on the inside! And that summer, after Napoleon III.'s campaign in Italy, when no respectable person thought of hav ing her bonnet trimmed with any other color than solferino or magenta....

"The study of dress in these days is an approved branch of female education. It has never been wholly neglected, only women have too often pursued it with their eyes shut, and now they mean to keep them open.

"Whether Woman is behind Man in civilization because she pays an attention to dress which she has long ago disused, or whether her devotion to it is because Man requires her to be robed in gay attire. we are expected in this age to pay more attention to dress than men do, and are justified in doing so— within limits."-From Social Customs-FLORENCE HOWE HALL, 1887.

"To get emancipated from Man, or the political sovereignty of men in the State, is a very small matter and a victory quite insignificant compared with the conquest of Fashion."-HORACE BUSHNELL.

THE excessive and universal interest in dress displayed by American women, has been, like many other qualities, denominated "feminine,"