Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1886 — UNBECOMING STYLES. [ARTICLE]

UNBECOMING STYLES.

Ah Observer's Protest AsHln.t Women Blindly Following Fashion. [Rochester Post-Express.) I am so little accustomed to -what is mown as society that anything I say about it .should be taken as a disinterested and ingenuous expression of i opinion from an observer to whom certain customs that are hallowed fei society people by convention may seem new, strange, and possibly unlovely. A Veil-known statistician in New York was described as looking at humanity from ah outside point of view; and occasionally I glance at society in that way. Recently I went to church to ook at the marriage of a friend whom J greatly admire. The wedding was what is commonly called a fashionable one, and there were present the most of the society people of the city—many ol > them in full dress. As the result of my observation I frankly declare that J don’t like the looks of women in the prevailing evening costume. Anything that fashion sanctions is, of course, all right in the feminine judgment, and I do not mean to sav that every detail of dress was not in the latest style; but I will maintain—that it is “an opinion that fire cannot melt out of me”—that, considered artistically, most of the costumes were unbecoming. This is especially true of those cut with acute angles- opening upward in front and rear of the corsage. Far be it from me to say that the neck, shoulders, and bust of a pretty woman are not among the most beautiful things in the world; but the collar-bone and the ridge of the back are not the best points in any woman’s anatomy; and to these points this style of dress gives undue exposure. Even the cases where the acute angles were abandoned and the opening in the corsage broadened into a parallelogram, giving a fair view of neck, shoulders, and bosom, the effect was not always happy. In fully nine cases out of ten there was something incongruous in the result Either the arms were not pretty, or the neck was not graceful, or the bust was not fine, or the head and face were out of keeping with the lack of drapery. I know that it is awfully ungallant to say this. I know that it is a pleasing fiction that every woman looks like an angel in full dress; but, dear girls, they are flatterers that tell you so. It is a trying custom, in which few women look their best—as trying as a bathing suit, and how few' women can be graceful in that! What puzzles me is this: That women who study dress so closely and know so well their own best points should, after all, so seldom show independence in their costumes and robe themselves as individuals, rather than in certain styles prescribed by fashion. Why will they, merely because a certain cloth, a certain shape of skirt or corsage is in vogue, adopt it when nature so made them that another material, another color, another style of garment, would set them off to greater advantage?

Doffing the Hat. All Jewish congregations worship with their heads covered. So do the Quakers, although St. Paul’s injunctions on the matter are clearly condemnatory of the practice. The Puritans of the Common•wealth would seem to have kept their hats on, whether preaching or being preached to, since Pepys notes hearing a simple clergyman exclaiming against men weaTitig"theirhats"inthe"church, and a year afterward (1662) writes, “To the French church in the Savoy, and where they have the common prayer book read in French, and which I never saw before, the minister do preach with his bat off, I suppose in further conformity with our.church. ” William 111. rather scandalized his church-going subjects by following Dutch customs, and keeping his head covered in church; and. when it did. please him to doff his ponderous hat during the service, he invariably donned it as the preacher mounted the pulpit stairs. When Bossuet, at the age of 14, treated the gay fellows of the Hotel de Rambouillet to a midnight sermon, Voltaire sat it out with his hat on, but, uncovering it when the boy-preacher had finished; bowed low before him, saying, “Sir, I never heard a man preach at once so early and so late. ” As a token of respect, uncovering the head is one of the oldest of courtesies.

Lamenting the decay of respect to age, Clarendon tells us ’ that in his young days he never kept his hat on his head before his elders except at dinner. A curious exception, that, to modern notions of politeness; but it was the custom to sit covered at meals' down to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Sir John Finett, deputy master of the ceremonies at the court of King James 1., was much puzzled as to whether the Prince of Wales should sit coveted or not at dinner in the presence of the sovereign, when ft foreign ambassador was one of the guests, since the latter, as the representative of a king, was not expected to veil his bonnet. Giving James a hint of his difficulty, his Majesty disposed of it, when the time came, by uncovering his head for a little while—an example all present were bound to follow—and then, putting on his hat again, requested the prince and the ambassador to do likewise.

“Hats need not be raised here.” So, it is said, runs a notice in one of Nuremberg’s streets. “Hats must be raised here,” should have been inscribed on the Kremlin gateway, where a government officer used to stand to compel passers-by to remove their hats, because under that gate the retreating army of Napoleon withdrew from Moscow. Whether tlie regulation is in force at this day is more than we know. —Hatters’ Gazette. Musical Item. “I desire,” said Miss Esmeralda Longcoffin, entering a music store on Austin avenue, “to purchase a piece of music for my little brother, who plays on the piano. ” “Here, Miss, is precisely what vou want. ’* “What is the name of it?” “The Maiden’s Prayer for fifty cents. ” “Only fifty cents! Why, he’s much further advanced than tl&t, for last month he played a piece worth seven ty - five cents. Haven’t yon something for ,i dollar?’’— Texas Siftings.