DRESS.

Religion and Dress--Variety in Nature--Dress should not be

Injurious--Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest--A

Subject of Religious Consideration--Suicide _vs._

Providence--Foolish Vanity--Taste an Element of Mind--Dress should

be Symbolical--Woman should Elevate her Aims--Appropriate Dress

Admirable.

Comfort, taste, and religion agree that _Dress_ is one of the

proprieties of civilized and Christian life. If religion reaches a part,

it does the whole of life. If it should direct us anywhere, it should in

the matter of Dress. There are few things upon which people are more

liable to err, and about which there is more wrong feeling than this.

Many religious sects have seen this, and have attempted to bring the

matter of Dress wholly under the ban of ecclesiastical direction. In

this they were partly right and partly in error. They were right in

believing that religion should extend a fostering and restraining care

over the subject of Dress; but wrong in believing that it should Dress

all in the same manner. Our Quaker brethren, the Friends, than whom no

purer and better people have ever lived--noble followers of the lowly

Prince of Peace--the truest _friends_ that humanity has ever found

since the days of the Apostles, or that Jesus has ever had in the

earth--the world-renowned speakers of the sweet, plain language which

hath the charm of divinity within it, and in which love always chooses

to express its tender emotions--adopted the idea that religion should

extend its sway over the subject of Dress. In this they did well; but,

in my humble opinion, erred in putting the shears into the hands of

sectarianism to cut every man's Dress by exactly the same pattern, and

to choose it all from the same grand web of drab. It is sectarianism,

and not religion, which would Dress every man alike. That is making

Dress the badge of the order. Any thing put on outwardly to tell the

world to what sect you belong is an evidence of sectarianism, and not of

religion. The Quaker wears the sign of his sect all over his body. The

drunkard wears his on his face. The Catholic wears his in his beads and

cross. If God had designed that all men should dress in one color,

methinks he would have made them all of one complexion; and not only so,

but would have colored nature in that peculiar hue--would have clothed

all the forests, fields, flowers, birds, and skies in that color, and

have fitted every man's taste to enjoy it.

If He had designed every man to cut his Dress in one form, after one

model, I see not why he did not fashion nature after that pattern, and

make that peculiar curve, and cast the grand leading ones in all his

works, and fit the universal taste to that form. But, on the contrary,

nature is robed in every variety of color and form; the human taste is

equally diversified, and the forms and complexions of men are not less

various.

It is clear to my mind that we may reason from this, that men not only

may, but should dress in different forms and colors and after differing

styles. What is pleasing to some men's taste is and ever will be

displeasing to others. Taste is an inherent quality in our minds. We

naturally possess tastes peculiar to ourselves, and no amount of culture

can make these differing tastes agreeably harmonious. Some tastes revel

in the gay, others in the grave, others in the changing. Some delight in

high colors, others in subdued; some in diversity, others in sameness.

There is nothing irreligious in this difference in taste. Each one is

equally gratified in God's beautiful and diversified works. The grave

and golden clouds, the dark and rosy tints of the sunset sky, the

gorgeous rainbow and the modest Aurora, the flashing flower and the

lowly heather, the towering pine and the creeping vine, the rich green

field of summer and the calm gray forest of winter, the thousand million

forms of the hill-and-dale landscape, and the equally diversified colors

and forms of birds and beasts, confer the richest feasts of pleasure

upon every variety of natural taste.

Looking thus upon the panoramic field of God's works, we must conclude

that he has taken especial care to gratify the varying tastes of his

creatures. And more than this; we must conclude that He himself has an

infinite taste, which finds an infinite pleasure in making and viewing

this magnificent universe of flashing splendor and somber sweetness,

this field on field, system beyond system, far off where human eye can

never reach, all shining and moving in an infinite variety of forms,

colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a lover

of Dress. He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works.

Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a

mantle of beauty; every star is vailed in brightness; every bird is

clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle upon

the thousand hills are dressed by the Hand Divine. Who, studying God in

his works, can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence of correct

taste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he has made them?

Who can doubt that Dress is a matter properly coming within purview of

religion? Religion is what we learn of God. It is human imitation of the

Divinity. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Now what I mean by Dress coming under the direction of religion is, that

our manners and style of Dress shall not interfere with the principles

of true religion, shall not injure the body, corrupt the heart, debase

the mind of the individual; shall not degrade society, nor work any evil

influence in it, but, on the contrary, shall do good both to the

individual and society. Now let us ask whether our present modes of

Dress are thus brought under the direction of religious principles?

First: Do our modes of Dress injure our bodies? In this, young women,

you may be judges. Are your forms permitted to expand as God designed

them? Are your organs and limbs and muscles permitted their full and

proper play? Is your blood in no way impeded in its life-mission through

your bodies? Are you protected from the winter's cold, from wind and wet

at all points, as you should be? Can you breathe freely and easily the

proper amount of air to oxygenate your blood and give you health and

strength? If so, what mean the languid faces, the sallow countenances,

the pale cheeks, the wasp-like forms, the rounded shoulders, the bent

spines, the feeble lungs, the short breathings, the cold feet, the

hampered step, the neuralgic pains, the hysteric nervousness, the weak

sides, the frailty, weakness, and painfulness so prevalent among women?

What mean the head-aches, and liver-complaints, and consumptions, and

neuralgias, and the troublesome ailments of your sex from which scarcely

a woman of you is free? Those strings which bind so closely your chests,

do they not impede your breathing, and thus weaken your lungs and

corrupt your systems? Those dresses hooked so closely that every seam in

them gapes as in agony, giving you so much the appearance of convicts in

strait jackets, are they not in the way when you want to breathe a full

breath, and do they permit the exercise of all the muscles that strive

for life within them? That enormous weight of skirts that you hang over

portions of your bodies that should be choicely protected instead of

burdened, how they hang down like so many dead weights on your vitality,

weakening and diseasing the most delicate economy of your fearfully and

wonderfully made systems! and how your whole frames are taxed every day

of your lives with this wrongly placed and worse than useless burden.

This alone is enough to bring premature disease and death to any

ordinary woman. The law of health demands that the extremities of our

bodies should be kept warm and well protected, while the parts

containing our vital economy should be only comfortably clothed and left

free to the most natural and easy action, well ventilated or exposed to

the ingress and egress of the atmosphere, without any local pressures or

means for unnatural warmth. Only think of wearing a thick, heavy girdle

of many pounds' weight around the whole zone of the abdominal region--a

sort of engirdling poultice, heating and pressing like a girdle of hot

lava, day after day and year after year! Is it a wonder that you have so

many weaknesses and pains and saddening afflictions upon you? And then

your feet treading these cold pavements, this damp earth, these frozen

or wet walks, in slippers and silk or cotton stockings! The very part of

your bodies of all others you should keep most warm and dry, you expose

to every wind and frost, water-pool and snow-storm, in the year; sit

through the whole winter with them on cold floors, where every

door-crack and floor-crack is breathing in upon them cold, damp breaths

from cellars or streets while perhaps your heads are hot in a dry stove

air, and your lungs are breathing an atmosphere so hot and close that it

has scarcely a breath of life in it, and all the while you say you are

comfortably dressed!

And then, to make the matter still worse, you trail your bedrabbled

dress into all the mud and water and tobacco filth on the yard's width

you occupy in walking, exhibiting the strangest spectacle of civilized

humanity that can well be imagined, a woman claiming good sense,

sweeping the streets all about her to make cold and wet her already

almost bare feet and ankles!

Nor is this all. These damp winter winds bathe many a bare arm, kiss

wantonly many an unprotected neck, and visit rudely many a bosom only

veiled with a gossamer gauze. To say nothing of such an exposure to

every lewd eye that roves the street, and the unwomanly impudence it

offers to every modest gaze, it is a hazardous, wicked, criminal

exposure of health, and a total neglect of all the ends and uses of

Dress. And then, to crown all, you go out in all weathers with your

heads exposed to the fiercest blasts, all unbonneted; for Webster says a

bonnet is a _covering_ for the head; but few are the women's heads we

have seen covered this season--and then wonder why you should have such

terrible colds, such troublesome coughs, such griping pleurisies, such

burning fevers, and so many ailments!

Now, I ask again, and you shall be judges, young women, if your modes of

Dress do not injure your bodies? Do they answer the ends of Dress? Any

one who has given the subject a moment's judicious consideration must

see that there has been and still is a fearful departure from the real

uses of Dress. The primary object of Dress is to clothe and make

comfortable the body, so that it may be the peaceful and happy

dwelling-place of the spirit in its earthly pilgrimage. But filling it

with disease is not making it comfortable. Hampering it in fetters is

not making it comfortable.

I have referred to a few of the most prominent evils of our present mode

of female Dress. Now, let me ask, if our women would dress warmly and

securely from wind and wet, yet not in too close confinement, their feet

and limbs; if they would shorten their skirts so they would swing clear

of wet, mud, filth, and passing obstacles; diminish their number and

dimensions, so that their weight would not be burdensome, and suspend

them from the shoulders, instead of girting them around the abdominal

and spinal regions; would give their chests a free and easy play; would

cover their heads, arms, and necks whenever exposed to cold and damp

weather or night air, and would always seek to be clothed easily and

comfortably, giving always a sufficiently free circulation of air

between their dresses and bodies, to carry off the constant exhalations

going out from every living body; if they would thus dress, would they

not be far more healthy, happy, and useful? Would the roses not return

to their cheeks, the full, swelling beauties of woman's strength to

their forms?

This subject has weighty moral and religious considerations connected

with it. Have we any moral right thus to abuse our bodies, thus to

commit a snail-working suicide? What matters it, so far as the guilt is

concerned, whether we kill ourselves in a minute or a year, a year or an

age? We have more suicides among us than we sometimes imagine. The

young miss goes out in a cold night, with bare arms and head and neck,

and wafer-like slippers on her feet, with her waist engirded in cords

and whalebones, and her load of burdensome skirts, and dances in high

glee two thirds of the night; then, with a vail on her head and her

under-garments not yet dry from the recent perspiration, she goes to her

cold chamber and bed, to get a troubled sleep, and awaken in a fever

which carries her to her grave. Then round her mutilated body gather her

mourning friends to bid it a long farewell and hear her minister talk of

the inscrutable ways of God's providence. Call it by what name _you_

will, to _me_ it is suicide. Another, by daily exposures in wet and cold

and change of climate in the common woman-dress, takes cold after cold,

till a consumption fastens upon her lungs and she slowly passes away.

Another circle of mourners weep, and another minister talks of the

inscrutable ways of God; but to me it is still another case of suicide.

Another passes through the common lot of girlhood, with the common

succession of colds and coughs, fevers and pains; in due time marries,

with her chest cramped into half its proper dimensions, her lungs small

and weak, her female economy all diseased and weakened by the abuses of

dress and exposure. At length the period of maternity approaches. Too

weak to sustain its labors and burdens, she dies amid them. Friends come

weeping again, and the minister condoles them with the sad old story of

God's inscrutable ways. But to me it is not inscrutable. It is another

case of suicide. Could the grave-yards all over the country speak, they

would utter fearful tales of this suicidal abuse of Dress.

The second question is, Do our ideas of Dress corrupt our hearts? One

may almost worship at the shrine of Dress. Many are the young ladies

whose thoughts rise no higher than the dress they wear and the bonnet

that decks their heads. If they can be hung over with gewgaws and

tinselry, if plumes shall tremble on their heads, silks shall rustle

about them, and jewels shine wherever they go, to catch every eye and

bewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of

womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of

vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid,

cold, moonshine women, whose souls can perch on a plume, and whose only

ambition is to be a traveling advertisement for the men and women who

traffic in what they wear, are many who flaunt in satins and glitter in

diamonds. How many such there are we would not say. But I doubt not,

that not a little like them are many who are otherwise women. They love

Dress; love it inordinately; love it when they ought to love something

worthier; and spend their time, and thoughts, and mind, and heart, and

money on what they shall wear. The fashion-plate is their profoundest

study. The science of dressing is the only one they care to know. The

cut of a collar is a matter of sublime importance. How much of this

foolish vanity there is in the world! How many otherwise good women does

it spoil! And now the question with every young woman should be, How do

I feel about my dress? Is it a matter too bright in my eye--a subject

too important in my mind? Am I vain of my dress? Does it corrupt my

heart, take my attention from virtue, from mental improvement, from the

graces of a good life, from religion, from my Saviour, and my God? Do I

devote thoughts to Dress that ought to be given to the great problems of

duty, life, womanhood, to the development and culture of my powers of

heart and mind; to science, conversation, language, and the objects of

living? Why am I? Why do I live? To what end? Is there a great object in

my being? Have I any thing to do in its attainments? Does my love of

Dress interfere with the true objects of woman-life? This is the

questioning mind which every young woman should possess. Now let me ask,

Does not your love of Dress lead you from the great ends of woman-life?

Are you not taken captives by the glitter of Dress? sold bond-slaves to

your bonnets and shoes?

Oh, what a fearful waste of time and talent is given to the frivolity

and vanity of dress! what a sacrifice of soul and body, principle and

life, is made upon its altar!

What multitudes of young women waste all that is precious in life on the

finified fooleries of the toilet. How the soul of womanhood is dwarfed

and shriveled by such trifles, kept away from the great fields of active

thought and love by the gewgaws she hangs on her bonnet! How light must

be that thing which will float on the sea of passion--a bubble, a

feather, a puff-ball! And yet multitudes of women float there, live

there, and call it life. Poor things! Scum on the surface! But there is

a truth, young women; woman was made for a higher purpose, a nobler

use, a grander destiny. Her powers are rich and strong; her genius bold

and daring. She may walk the fields of thought, achieve the victories of

mind, spread around her the testimonials of her worth, and make herself

known and felt as man's co-worker and equal in whatsoever exalts mind,

embellishes life, or sanctifies humanity.

But notwithstanding Dress has fascinated so many thousands, and led them

down the paths of vanity and frivolity, it is still a means of culture,

an instrumentality in the hands of virtue, an evidence of civilization.

It addresses itself to the taste, and affords opportunity for its

improvement. Taste is an element of mind. It is the spring-source of the

fine arts, of all the embellishments of life, of poetry, and all that

pertains to elegant literature. It is the grand refiner of life.

Whatsoever cultivates the taste, develops properly its activities, and

refines and elevates its pleasures, does a good office for man. And this

is just the proper office of Dress. It is true that Dress has a mission,

a good one, a moral one, ay, a religious one. It is a refiner, a

cultivator, a subduer of coarseness, barbarity, rudeness. Pity the soul

that has no taste for Dress. The Dress of a man speaks out his soul. In

other words, a man is known by his Dress; not by its richness, not by

its conformity to fashion, but by its neatness, appropriateness,

harmony, and the way he carries it. A clown will carry a king's dress

clownishly; and a true king will carry a clown's dress kingishly. It is

not the Dress that makes the man, but the man that makes the Dress.

Every state of society is manifest in its Dress. The savage is fond of

gewgaws, glitter, paint, feathers, colors, mere show, with little or no

reference to utility or taste. The barbarian approaches one step nearer

the true standard. He exhibits a faint idea of utility and taste; he

subdues and blends colors, puts ornaments into use, and varies his Dress

a little to suit circumstances. The civilized man shows more taste, less

ambition for glowing colors, a greater skill in making, a better idea of

fitness and propriety. The enlightened man is more grave in the

character of his Dress, wears less ornaments, admits none save where it

combines utility and taste, is chaste, subdued, harmonious, classical in

every thing that pertains to Dress. We can not yet lay full claims to an

enlightened Dress. Our female Dress is a half barbaric costume--a rude

mixture of ornament and utility, in which ornament greatly predominates.

Our soldier's Dress, very appropriately, retains all the elements of

savagism--high colors, sharp contrasts, profuseness of ornament. This is

as it should be. But every enlightened man should regret that our female

Dress is not more grave, classical, chaste, subdued, and appropriate,

combining taste and utility, refinement and strength. A woman in full

street Dress, with her profusion of ornaments, her flounces and

fly-about gewgaws, is a very poor representation of good sense,

refinement, and cultured, classic taste. If our artists should carve and

paint their master-pieces in such taste, we should pronounce it

barbarism at once.

I would gladly pursue this theme, and trace the office of Dress in all

its operations as a reforming and refining agent, and show how to

improve our tastes, correct our judgments, and utilize and at the same

time beautify our dresses. But time will not permit. I will only say in

addition, that the love of Dress, when properly used, is noble; when

abused, is evil; when wisely directed, it combines utility and beauty;

when abused, it possesses neither.

But the idea which I am most anxious to impress upon the minds of young

women, is the symbolic use of Dress, is the fact that they have _minds_

to dress as well as bodies. Our outward Dress should be symbolic of an

inward Dress. While we toil to robe in beauty these perishing bodies, we

should labor more industriously to adorn those immortal qualities which

shall wear their adornments when a new heaven and a new earth shall

succeed to those that now are. This is the point at which young women

err more than elsewhere. They labor to dress the body, and sadly neglect

the soul. O what a fearful dearth of soul-dress, of mental adornment, of

interior beauty there is among young women! Scarcely can one in ten of

them speak their mother-tongue correctly, converse intelligibly ten

minutes upon any subject of common interest, write a simple business or

friendly letter correctly, or comprehend the simplest natural sciences.

What do they know of mechanics, science, literature, government,

theology, history, reform--the great questions that stir the world of

mind? How little, how little! There are some noble exceptions to this

remark, I know. But we must not disguise the fact, that there is a

fearful want of mental culture among young woman. They give forty

thoughts to dressing their bodies to one for their minds; they spend

forty dollars for bonnets, shoes, and clothes to one for books,

instruction, and improvement; they give forty hours to toilet to one to

solid study and serious reflection; they put forty adornments upon their

persons to one upon their minds. How sad the thought! Compare a

well-dressed body with a well-dressed mind. Compare a taste for dress

with a taste for knowledge, culture, virtue, and piety. Dress up an

ignorant young woman in the "height of fashion;" put on plumes and

flowers, diamonds and gewgaws; paint her face and girt up her waist, and

I ask you if this side of a painted feathered savage you can find any

thing more unpleasant to behold. And yet just such young women we meet

by the hundred every day on the street and in all our public places. It

is awful to think of. Why is it so? It is only because woman is regarded

as a doll to be dressed--a plaything to be petted--a house ornament to

exhibit--a thing to be used and kept from crying with a sugar-plum show.

She must learn that she has a great soul, a great mission, a great duty,

and a great power, before she will break away from the bonds of the

toilet and be herself. Woman by nature is no more a toilet puppet than

man. Her mental and moral duties are equal to his. Her powers of mind

and heart are equal to his. Her field of labor it is wide as his. Her

time is as precious as his. It is as important that her soul should grow

as his. She has as much need of knowledge, wisdom, courage, strength of

mind and purpose, as much need of all the powers and beauties of a

cultured soul, as he. Why should she not adorn her mind, develop her

powers, live to a high purpose, act well a noble part, do and be

according to her capacity? Let young women elevate their aims; give less

time to the toilet, more to study, duty, and active employment; regard

themselves as something more than dolls, as something intelligent,

useful, to be improved, to grow wise and great. Let them dress their

minds in wisdom, adorn their hearts with virtue, clothe their souls with

strength, with the majesty of noble purposes and high resolutions, and

they will soon be something more than automatons on which the milliner

and mantua-maker hang their wares.

I have written plainly rather than flatteringly, and I have done so

because I believe the time has fully come when woman should be a woman,

and not a mere gaudy appendage to man; when her soul should wake up from

its long lethargy and put on the habiliments of wisdom and usefulness;

when she should live to a grander purpose than she has done, and should

make her power felt more sensibly in the morality and religion, business

and bosom, of the world. I am not a disregarder of the beauties and

proprieties of Dress. On the contrary, I admire appropriate Dress. It

speaks out the man or woman. But I would have everybody feel that the

man makes the Dress. Almost any thing looks well on a noble woman. The

plainest Dress becomes agreeable when worn by a person of grand purpose

and good-doing life. Real life when unadorned is most adorned. Noble

womanhood is always beautiful. The world always has and always will

admire it. The richest Dress is always worn on the soul. The adornments

that will not perish, and that all men most admire, shine from the heart

through this life. God has made it our highest, holiest duty to dress

the soul he has given us. It is wicked to waste it in frivolity. It is a

beautiful, undying, precious thing. If every young woman would think of

her soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her naked

mind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, would

listen to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through her

idle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation of

womanhood. I hope I address those who appreciate my words and my

feelings. Above almost every thing else do I desire woman's elevation in

the moral and intellectual scale of life. You may not see the mental or

moral nakedness of the mass of our young women as I do; you may not hear

the pleading voice of religion as I do; but I trust you do see your need

of higher purposes in life, and more active usefulness; I trust you do

see that you have souls to dress and hearts to adorn, and will attend to

this, your highest duty.

Lecture Four.