Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1905 — Old Fashioned Children. [ARTICLE]

Old Fashioned Children.

To speak with precision, children’s costumes do not begin before the closing year of the eighth century, Up to that time it was thought sufficient to dress the little folk, according to sex, in garments reproducing exactly those of the father and mother. Such clothes must, assuredly, have been very uncomfortable for creatures whose movements call for ease, and whose turbulence does not' well accord with the stiffness of the eighteenth century ruff, or the majestic amplitude of those perukes whose solemnity pears to overshadow the intimate life of our progenitors. It is to be observed iq this connection that wherever, in our day, ancient costumes have survived the invasion of the railroad and of what we are generally agreed to call progress, this manner of dressing children still continues. Anywhere in Brittany, in Holland, or in certain remote parts of Switzerland and the Tyrol, one may meet boys and girls from 5 to 6 years old promenading gravely in the habiliments of grown-up persons. And one perceives that such a fashion springs from an undeveloped conception of early youth, a conception which does not measure properly all the distance that separates the man from the child. —Century.