Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1882 — Which is the Better? [ARTICLE]

Which is the Better?

[Chicago Tribune.] One o! the great female writers on dress reform, in trying to illustrate how terrible the female dress is, says: “Take a man and pin three or four table-cloths about him, fastened back with elastic and looped up with ribbons, draw all his hair to the middle of his head and tie it tight, and hairpin on five pounds of other hair and a big bow of ribbon. Keep the front locks on pins all night, and let them tickle his eyes all day, pinch his waist into a corset, and give him gloves a size to small andshpes the same, and a hat that will not stay on without torturing elastic, and a little lace veil to blind hi* eyes whenever be goes out to walk, and he will know what a woman’s dress is.”

“Now, you think you’ve done it, don’t you, sis? Why, bless you, that toggery would be heaven compared to what a man has to contend with! Take a woman and put a pair of four-shilling men’s drawers on her, that are so tight that when they get damp from perspiration they stick so you can’t cross yonr legs without an abrasion of the skin, the buckle in the back turning a somersault and sticking the points into your spinal meningitis; put on an under-shirt that draws across the breast so you feel as though you must cut a hole or two in it. and which is so short that it works up under your arms and allows the starchupper shirt to sandpaper around and file off the skin until you wish it was night, the tail of which will not stay tucked more than half a block, though you tuck, aud tuck, and tuck; then you fasten a collar, made of sheet zinc, two sizes too small for you, around your neck; put on a vest, and coat, and liver pad, and lung pad, and a porous plaster, and a chamois shirt between the two others; then put a bunch of keys and buttonhook and a jack-knife and a pistol and a pocketbook and a plug of tobacco in your pockets, so they will chafe your person, and- then go and drink a few whisky cocktails and walk around in the sun with tight boots on, and yon will know what a man’s dress is. “Come to figure it up, it is about an even thing, sis, isn’t it?” Henry VIII. bade defiance to both extreme religious parties, burning as heritics those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers and hanging as traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. *