want frequent changes; while in the measure that they were at leisure they welcomed dress as an occupation affording an outlet for taste and a variety of interest to break the insipid monotony of their lives.

Briefly, then, the pursuit of dress as a serious matter by a larger number of women than ever before in the history of the world, has been primarily due to a number of political, social, and commercial influences, for which women themselves were not responsible. It was one of the first signs that the " ages of deficit" were ended, and the era of surplus arrived. It was one of the earliest expressions of democratic principles, and, as invention and manufacture have developed, it has become the approved means of promoting trade. And these national forces were acting throughout the Nineteenth Century with constantly increasing strength upon women. The degree of female receptiveness depended upon two things: the amount of leisure, and the extent to which they had imbibed the tradition that a lovely appearance was the quality most to be desired in woman. This beauty-cult is now fast becoming secondary among well-educated women to the cultivation of the mind and the practice of gentle manners. Why, then, do the majority of women still pursue the vagaries of fashion so madly? Because the average woman

does not easily outgrow impressions stamped upon her by the traditions of her kind, we must turn for an explanation to the effect of the pursuit of dress upon her personal character.

CHAPTER VIII

CLOTHES AND CHARACTER

"He that is proud of the russling of his silks like a madman laughs at the rattling of his fetters. For, indeed, Clothes ought to be our remembrancers of our lost innocency.”—THOMAS FULLER.

"Thy Clothes are all the Soul thou hast."-BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

EVER since the Civil War the amount of time and expense put upon dress by women in this country has been increasing, until now it has become the chief occupation and the accepted amusement of a very large number of those above the laboring class. It has been generally assumed that this is due to some inherent personal taste on the part of women; but it is a matter of economic history, as we have already seen, that dress as a pursuit has been the result of the development of manufacture and of modern methods of trade promotion rather than of an innate frivolity, to which leisure and idleness have always contributed.

When we visualize the typical jeweler, defthanded, short-sighted, and stoop-shouldered; or the drygoods clerk, radiating smiles and ladylike

manners; or the politician, swollen with selfconfidence and over-eating; we do not assume that he could never have been any other sort of man, even though his natural temperament may have dictated his choice of occupation. It is taken for granted in explaining such men that their ambitions in life have been molded by their environment to produce certain types of physique and character. It is a matter of common experience that there are very few human beings so specialized by their hereditary qualities that they could not have been different had they been born in another environment than the one in which we see them. When they are so specialized they are called eccentrics, and sometimes recognized as having genius.

One has only to observe the modifications of character and habits which take place in men who change from one industrial medium to another, requiring very different qualifications, to infer that women of the same breed might show unexpected variations if their environment were as varied and as stimulating. The effect of social surroundings in developing in women an inordinate love of adornment can be best measured, perhaps, by contemplating other and rather unusual types produced by exceptional circumstances. During the past century, wherever a girl, by force of circumstance or natural hatred of physical restraint,

refused to submit to the tyranny of dress, she became almost invariably and, it might almost be said, by virtue thereof, a superior human being. The wives of the California pioneers, brought up like other Eastern girls to give the utmost care to their dress, when transplanted to isolated homes on ranches and in mining camps, without servants, and often compelled to do the labor of a large household, while rearing their families, almost always emancipated their bodies from the trammels of long skirts and from corsets. Utility and cleanliness became the sole requisites of their clothing, and thus was released a vast amount of physical and mental energy to be spent in other and worthier directions. They managed complicated households, reared vigorous children, in emergencies guarded water-rights and mining properties with a shotgun; and in their old age were as fearless, as able-bodied, as warm-hearted, and as capable as their partners.

The influence of the Quaker costume and plain traditions in minimizing feminine and developing larger human qualities in women is registered in the Woman's Rights movement, in which the Friends played so large a part between 1840 and 1870. Lucretia Mott, the Quaker preacher, an exquisite, gentle, frail, and yet brilliant woman, was doubtless the most important figure among all the delegates to the World's Convention in