Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1877 — Inconveniences of Fashion. [ARTICLE]

Inconveniences of Fashion.

Fashion leads us all more or less by the nose, and makes us do pretty much as she pleases. We surrender ourselves, body and soul, to her guidance, and the form and motions of the one, as well as the character and principles of the other, are to a great degree governed by her directinghand. It is surprising—inexplicable, in fact —when we consider the vagueness of the origin of the sovereignty of Fashion, that her prerogative should be so little questioned. If this were exercised in a manner always conformable to our desires, tastes and conveniences, it might be easy to account for the readiness with which its claims are acknowledged; but so far is Fashion from adapting the government of her subjects to their nature and disposition that she seems only to exact submission in thwarting them. In dress, where the absolute authority of Fashion is so obvious, the whole body is yielded up to her without resistance, and the wooden figure of the jigging puppet is no more in the hand ana at the pull of the showman than is the human frame under her control. How cruelly this power is exercised we need hardly say; for who is not conscious of being forced at times to give up his ease, his comfort*—the very use, in fact, of his limbs and the free exercise of his ftinctions? Nay, more, who are not ready at the bidding of Fashion to torture themselves, and submit, with all the endurance of a red Indian, to self-inflicted Kins and sufferings of so exquisite a ad that it would task the cruel ingenuity of the savage to surpass? The body is bent here, stretched there; the head is oppressed with great weights; the waist is constricted by ever tightening bands, until the ribs crack and give wav, the internal organs are forced from their natural places and hindered in their functions, and the life-blood is stopped in its course; the limbs are manacled, and the feet, forced into small and unyielding boots, and thus squeezed into lifelessness, are set to totter under an overweighted body upon the impossible support or long and narrow heels. Fashion not only twists and shapes with her torturing processes the exterior form of the body, but interferes as rudely with its internal economy, and finds no less submissivenese on the part of her subjects. They are forced, in defiance of physiology, not only to clothe themselves, but to eat, drink and sleep in a manner contrary to the principles of their organization. Who is allowed to hesitate between « suit of fashion and one conformable to the weather ? Who would not rather face the terrors of disease than the horror of gentility at an unfashionable garment? Who dares to sit down to his dinner at the hour natural appetite seems to appoint, or eat in a way conformable to his pleasure and convenience? Most not everyone beware of putting his legs under the mahogany before Fashion, waiting until the day is over, has struck her late hour? Who, moreover, would have the audacity to interrupt any of the formalities with which she insists upon spreading and serving her table? Where is the man so bold as to ask twice for soup, or disturb in any other way the established solemnities of the four courses and a dessert? He had better, so he seems, at any rate, to think, suffer all the pangs of dyspepsia,

and take the certainties of a surfeit and the chances of an apoplexy. It might be suppoeMl that the sacredness with which we, in common with Englishmen, are said to regard our houses, would save them from intrusion. Wefcall them at times our castles, and we are food of quoting what either Burke or Pitt said about the inviolability of their thresholds? but, notwithstanding. Fashion walks in, without even a “by your leave," and exercises her usual impudence of sway. The proprietor is quite a secondary personage, and even before his proprietorship may have said to begun, Fashion has had her effective say. She chooses the site and makes the plan for the structure. When built, she selects the furniture and appropriates ths apartments, taking care always to keep the best for her fine company, and leaving the proprietor aud his family to shift how they may. If Fashion were at all a judicious guide in these matters to which she puts her busy finger, L might not be so bad to have to submit to her direction; but, unfortunately, her ways are ways of perverseness. As, when she dresses the body, she tortures it into unnatural forms and deranges its functions, so, in constructing houses and providing them with furniture and company, with a disregard of all fitness, she perverts the purposes of human habitation and society. Of course little regard is had by her to the means and happiness of her subjects, and. with reckless expenditure and social dissipation, she not seldom leaves them bankrupt and miserable. In education, especially of the female sex, fashion arrogates to herself the authority of a supreme guide, and no one seems to question it. The accomplishments, as they are called, whica are so laboriously -acquired and expensively paid for, what have they to commend them to parents or their daughters beyond being passports to the recognition of fashion? Who pretqpds that they are of the least value as a means or end of mental and moral development ? Fashion has not yet ventured, it is presumed, to dictate to us the religion we are to believe in. She, however, often takes the liberty of pointing out the conventicle of her elect that her followers are to join, and choosing the exorbitant pulpit orator they must pay for, if not listen to. When they are sick, fashion sends her greedy physician to their bedsides; and with the constancy she possesses, if she may want every other virtue, she not only sticks to her friends, to their cost, during their whole life, but follows them to their burial with a splendid show of sorrow, at the charge of their estates, and throws into their graves armfuls of rare flowers and costly wreaths, at the expense of their mourners.— Harper't Bazar.