Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1876 — The Spring Bonnet Question. [ARTICLE]

The Spring Bonnet Question.

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, but in the same season the consuming desire of the average woman is to obtain a satisfactory bonnet. If women possessed the privilege of suffrage, the constitutional provision for a spring election would have been a mistake. At that» period of the year the questions involved in the selection of a bonnet override and trample out almost every other issue. Whether Turkey is likely to be dismembered; whether Bristow or Blaine shall be President; whether specie payments shall be resumed in 1879; whether the Mediterranean can really be drained into the Sahara, these and all similar matters, though they promise natural or political convulsions, are forgotten when the spring bonnet looms up as a thing impending in the immediate future?''-. The preliminary preparations for the purchase are made, perhaps, in church, where, while tjie ears of the average woman are receiving the gospel truth, her eyes are comparing the merits of the various styles about her; in the horse-car. where every wearer of a striking bonnet, for a moment after entering, is the conscions focus of feminine interest; in the street, where the average woman, in the vernal season, never fails to twist the muscles of her neck in attempting to observe how a passing bonnet looks from behind; and in the shop windows, which are thronged with eager students of the various modes. And so, when the “ opening day” arrives, the average woman, with fifty different ideals floating in a hazy atmosphere in her mind, enters upon the task of purchasing the article that she desires. When, after much hesitation, deliberation and discussion, a certain style has been selected, she orders the bonnet to be trimmed, and she goes away with a feeling of relief, which, before she reaches home, gradually changes to a conviction that the very worst style of all has been chosen. And thus, when the bonnet reaches her, she pronounces it “hideous,” and proceeds to pick it to pieces with the determination to make it over again. When the work of reconstruction is completed the bonnet is not satisfactory. No spring bonnet ever was. The very loveliest of them is worn with a secret and oppressive belief that something about it might have been improved. But when it has been trimmed and re-trimmed until the task becomes wearisome and heartsickening, and until the owner is almost ready to curse the day when such torments of the spirit and the flesh were invented, it is at last accepted as an unsatisfactory shape, as the best that can be done with the inaterial. But the first time that it is worn, the owmer perhaps observes that Mrs, Brown, whom she meets in the street, has her feather upon the right side, and another piecemeal reorganization is undertaken, only to be repeated afterward when it is perceived that Mrs. Jones’ bonnet, with the feather upon the left side, looks far better than the bonnet of Brown. Partial contentment perhaps might come with the disposition of the feather in accordance with the mode of Jones, if the owner of the bonnet did not perceive at church that Mrs. Smith’s bonnet is the ipost beautiful of all, with a feather on each side and perhaps one in the middie. There is no comfort in the service of the sanctuary upon the day when such a discovery is made. The average woman returns home with a feeling strong upon her that thereare some trials in life which can hardly be reached even by the consolations of religion. The direst agony usually is over when the season is thus far advanced: but the sum of misery that yet remains in the discontent with the spring bonnet as it is in its final form is merely dreadful to contemplate. What the remedy shall be only’ female philosophers can decide. Sheer bareheadedness would seem to offer permanent relief, and to the tyrant man there would appear to be very little risk, to physical health in achangefrom a bonnet that is pinned to the extreme rear ■of the back hair to no bonnet at all. But if a headdress of some kind really is regarded as a necessity, perhaps a compromise might be made at some comfortable point between the folded towel WQrn upon the head of the Italian peasant woman and the gorgeous mass of flowers, frippery and fol-de-rol which form the vexatious spring bonnet of the woman of America. —Philadelphia Bulletin..