The scientist expresses it thus: "Nature is giving up her secrets to man." The metaphysician puts it this way: "The soul of man is unveiling, and soon we shall know each other in Truth." The religionist has long looked for a time when, as prophesied by St. Paul, who was above all things a spiritually-conscious person, "we shall see each other face to face; not as now through a glass, darkly."
This tendency to "get behind the scenes" as it were, to penetrate the crust of mere outward semblance, and to reveal the interior nature, may be seen even in the fashions of our clothes. Despite thunders of denunciation from the self-constituted keepers of our morals, who are not yet free from the bondage of traditional ideas of virtue and "respectability," women have insisted upon freedom of the body in dress until at last the uncorseted, short-skirted, thinly-clad woman excites little adverse comment. The fact has at last established itself that the female form has legs.
This fact was only half suspected before; men have always wanted to see exactly what was beneath those long flowing skirts; and woman has always known that she possessed at least one trump card, in the game of enslaving man to become what modern slang has so aptly labeled her "meal-ticket." She could always keep him guessing as to whether or not she had legs; and the average man, be it known, possesses a fund of curiosity far in excess of that which is proverbially ascribed to woman. Men have been known to pay the highest price, even to donning the matrimonial yoke, to satisfy their curiosity. Women have always known this, and the worldly wise mother has besought her marriageable daughter to "keep her skirts well over her ankles" if she hoped to secure a man as a permanent banker! It does sound crude expressed thus, but this is the basis upon which at least nine-tenths of the respectable marriages of society are consummated. And this is the standard which the short-sighted keepers of public morals would have us retain. They would force women to act as though their bodies are vile. They would keep the mind encumbered with the corpse of an idea of modesty, from which the spirit has long since fled. The spirit has fled from it because it was a false idea of modesty; because it was founded upon the idea that woman was an instrument of the devil himself, and that to look upon her naked form was in itself wicked, and only permitted to poor man as a concession to his own innate defilement.
The good Church at one time, not so far distant, refused to admit women to the communion table in the "holy sacrament." A fine chance has any sacrament of being holy, with one half of it missing!
The old idea of womanly modesty consisted of blushing with shame and embarrassment if by chance her ankles became exposed to the interested and curious gaze of a male. Notwithstanding this ideal of modesty, the designing and beguiling female managed to arrange just such a contretemps every time there was an eligible male within sight; if discovered, she either assumed a look of infantile innocence, or she took the opportunity to coax a becoming blush.
To be sure, this does not accurately describe all women of "the good old days." There was the other type.
Nature manifests in extremes. There was the type, fitting ancestors to those women of to-day who are outraged and shocked at the present-day fashions, which actually disclose the fact that women are anatomatically endowed with legs and hips, quite in defiance of man's inherited predilection for making this discovery under conditions that would pamper to his satiating sex-appetite. They, poor creatures, were dreadfully ashamed of being women, and they did all that was possible to conceal the fact. They, doubtless, would gladly have amputated their legs, if the ministers had so decreed, and they apologized to the world every time an unforseen circumstance uncovered a portion of these offensive legs. In fact, they denied the existence of "said members," and alluded to them tentatively and with modest hesitation, as "limbs."
"But," some will exclaim, "we cannot see any possible connection between a regenerated race, and a fashion which permits the display of the female figure upon the public streets, where men who are as yet un-regenerated, and licentious, may leer and pass vile remarks, and suggest lustful thoughts."
Few can see any connection between our so-called practical, everyday life, and the spiritual life. They look upon the spiritual life as something remote; something in the dim and ever and ever distant future. The spiritual life is supposed to be so negative that we postpone living it, as long as we possibly can; and whereas the human family has prayed and prayed, for Lo! these many ages: "Thy kingdom come upon earth," they apparently have not had the slightest idea that God would take them at their word.
They are like the old darky who called upon "de Lawd to strike him dead if he was not telling the truth," when as a matter of fact he was lying roundly. At that moment a bricklayer on the building above where Rastus was standing, dropped a brick, which struck the old darkey on the head, and he exclaimed "What's de matter, good Lawd, caint you'all take a joke?"