The parlor and drawing-room are now running a race with the theatre
and opera bouffe. They are now nearly neck and neck in the race, the
latter a little ahead; but the parlor and the drawing-room are gaining
on the others, and the probability is they will soon be even and pass
the stand so nearly at the same time that one half of Pandemonium will
clap its hands because opera bouffe has beaten, and the other half
because the drawing-room has beaten. Let printing-press, and platform,
and pulpit hurl red-hot anathema at the boldness of much of womanly
attire. I charge Christian women, neither by style of dress nor
adjustment of apparel, to become administrative of evil. Show me the
fashion plates of any age between this and the time of Louis XVI., of
France, and Henry VIII., of England, and I will tell you the type of
morals or immorals of that age or that year. No exception to it.
Modest apparel means a righteous people. Immodest apparel always means
a contaminated and depraved society.