Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 295, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1915 — A Protest [ARTICLE]

A Protest

"I don’t mind you getting a new suit and a new hat,” said Calnlp to his wife, “but there is one thing I do Insist on. It is that you refrain from buying any article of clothing, be it hat suit or shoes, that makes you look as if you had been on a jag. “Yes, I said a jag! I don’t care whether it is a Ladies’ Home Destroyed suggestion or a Ladles’ Home Impossible design. It is all the same to me. Jag clothing doesn’t go on my wife. “Ordinary bughouse blouses I can stand for. I have become more or less accustomed to them. But I cannot stand it to see my wife looking as if she were drunk and staggering. “If your mother wishes to wear a devil-a-care stuff let her go to it I don’t care. It’s up to her. But I will not stand it on you and the girls. "A hat that’s supposed to have been knocked to one side by your leaning against a wall will not do, nor a stagger skirt, nor a jag jacket You have to look sober. It won’t do for the wife of a distinguished man to look otherwise. “I don’t want your garments to look as if you had slept in them all night. Nor do I want you to look as if you were having a turkish bath. It makes my head ache to see you looking like that because —er —I have some knowledge of how it feels to feel as you would look in some of these garments. " I never could bear to see anyone uncomfortable. Ordinary thumbscrew discomfort is bad enough, but the kind of discomfort that goes with the jag look suggested by your jag jerseys is worse than thumbscrews. "When I look at such female attire I am reminded not only of the cost of such clothing but of the cost of such a champagne jag as the outfit suggests to me. Let me see —1100 worth of champagne wouldn’t begin to make a person look as tipsy as the ladies look in the latest whoop-hooray dress that the Home Destroyer and the Home Impossible are now illustrating. “Moreover you women shouldn’t encourage a man to go to such lengths. I am sure the poor man who designs these clothes has to assume a terrible thirst before he can think them out. He couldn’t do so under any other circumstances. “I don’t suppose, Indeed that a three days’ spree would get him anything half as inebriated looking as the ladies have in those pictures you are studying. “You women should refuse to wear such garments. You should allow the poor designer te sober up and come out of it and be once more a human being. Don’t, I beseech you, turn a man into such a tank for such a purpose!" “What time was it,” asked Mrs. Calnlp softly, “when you came in last night."