"Many a modest woman appears at a party with her arms nude, and so much of
her chest exposed that you can see nearly half of the mammal glands. Many
a modest mother permits her daughters to make this model-artist exhibition
of themselves.
"One beautiful woman said, in answer to my complaints, 'You should not
look.'
"'But,' I said, 'do you not adjust your dress in this way on purpose to
give us a chance to look?'
"She was greatly shocked at my way of putting it.
"'Well,' I said, 'this assurance is perfectly stunning. You strip
yourselves, go to a public party, parade yourselves for hours in a glare
of gas-light, saying to the crowd, "Look here, gentlemen," and then you
are shocked because we put your unmistakable actions into words.'
"In discussing this subject before an audience of ladies in this city
(Boston), the other evening, I said, 'Ladies, suppose I had entered this
hall with my arms and bust bare; what would you have done? You would have
made a rush for the door, and, as you jostled against each other in
hurrying out, you would have exclaimed to each other, "O, the
unconscionable scallawag!" May I ask if it is not right that we should
demand of you as much modesty as you demand of us?' But you exclaim,
'Custom! it is the custom, and fashion is everything.'" Again the author
says,--
"This exposure of the naked bosom before men belongs not to the highest
type of Christian civilization, but to those dark ages when women sought
nothing higher than the gratification of the passions of man, and were
content to be mere slaves and toys.
"Boston contains its proportion of the refined women of the country. We
have here a few score of the old families, inheriting culture and wealth,
and who can take rank with the best. A matron who knows their habits
assures me that she never saw a member of one of those families in 'low
neck and short sleeves.'
"In the future free and Christian America, the very dress of women will
proclaim a high, pure womanhood.... We shall then discard the costumes
devised by the dissolute capitals of Europe.
"What a strange spectacle we witness in America to-day! Free, brave
American women hold out to the world the Bible of social, political, and
religious freedom, and anon we see them down on their knees, waiting the
arrival of the latest steamer from France, to learn how they may dress
their bodies for the next month."
Well, he does not censure ladies in the above manner all through; but yet,
in a most earnest and interesting way he divulges the most startling
truths, and even very young misses are delighted with the whole argument.
"Why, it's just like a story," exclaimed my twelve-year-old Katie on
reading it.
What Dr. Lewis objects to on the score of immodesty, I also oppose on the
ground of unhealthfulness. The idea of preventing or curing the
laryngitis, or consumption, in a lady, when there is nothing but gauze, or
a bit of ribbon and a galvanized bosom pin, between her neck and the cold
and changeable atmosphere of the north or east, is ridiculously absurd. No
doctors or doctors' pectorals can save such. "High necks," warm flannels,
or make your wills.