“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.