Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1876 — Fresh and Simple Attire. [ARTICLE]

Fresh and Simple Attire.

One whq wjites in an English journal on “Clothes” declares that “men do but ask to see their mothers, sisters and sweethearts daintily clean and fresh in al! their arrangements and appointments, and as pleasing to the eve as modesty and moderation permit.” There is something really charming in this picture; simple as it is. “ Daintily clean and fresh in all their arrangements and appointments." We may concede that, for great occasions, ladies may elaborate a little on this basis; but, say, for the breakfast table, or for all ordinaryhome occasions, how delightful it is to see odr womankind arrayed in fresh and simple' attire—no crumpled hair in unwholesome reminder of last night’s elaborate coiffure; no silks or other once-costly fabrics, now soiled and dilapidated; no formidable wrappers, loud of color and wonderful of pattern; no twice used linen; no slatternly shawls, that horror in untasteful households; no touch of deshabille in the slightest or least suggestive degree. Unhappily, this picture is much too rare. There are many women who persist in wearing at the morning meal, and upon other domestic occasions,, old gowns, or apparel that has been banished from the drawing-room. Now, a ladymay be dressed in more rich and costly fabrics at one time than another, but there should be no degrees of neatness, of order, of purity, or of freshness. The morning dress may be a wholly inexpensive one,--<but a grease-stain or a rent is just as much an offense at breakfast as at dinner. In fact, if there must be a stain, we would rather see it on the evening silk than the morning muslin, which should always have the supreme sentiment of freshness and daintiness. Many women have little idea of how greatly they shock the tastes ana really endanger the affections of thdir husbands by their unseemly domestic apparel. There is not a man of sense and refined feeling anywhere who would not prefer some simple and chaste adornment for his wife in the morning to any ’extreme of splendor at the evening ball.v Let a woman by all means dress brilliantly on those occasions that render it proper; we have no desire to abridge her privileges nor baffle her instincts in this particular; but we claim that it is important for her, if she values her household serenity, that she should give equal heed to her customary domestic attire. The female who goes about the house untidily dressed has no right to the title of woman. She is without those marks and indications by which she can be classified. X We reject the notion that a person can really be a woman who is without those dainty instincts for sweet and pure apparel that traditionally pertain to the feminine sex. Such an individual has lost the characteristics, the qualities, the refinements, the distinguishing elements of the daughters of Eve; ana, as she has not by this elimination gained any characteristic of tlie masculine sex, she evidently belongs to some as yet undescribed variety of the human family. —Appletons' Journal.