As God may help me I am going to set forth the evil effects of
improper dress or an excessive discipleship of costume. It is a simple
truth that you all know, although the pulpit has not yet uttered it,
that much of the womanly costume of our time is the cause of the
temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a
shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for
vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can
come to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of
masculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided
reformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer
of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a
so-called lady, and because of her sparse and incompetent apparel,
ordered her either to leave the house or habilitate herself
immediately. It is high time that our good and sensible women make
vehement protest against fashionable indecency, and if the women of
the household do not realize the deplorable extremes of much of the
female costume, that husbands implead their wives on this subject, and
that fathers prohibit their daughters. The evil is terrific and
overshadowing.