Leaving Constantinople, let us visit an old-time fashionable social gathering in Vienna. Women enter the ball-room. They are dressed in gauze so thin that you can see their skins all over their persons. Would any of us mistake the language of that kind of dress? Would any of us be in doubt about their relations to men?
Come to America to-day. We attend a social gathering. Women appear with their vital organs squeezed down to one-half the natural size, their arms and busts naked, while their trails are so long that, whenever they turn round, they are obliged to use their hands to push them out of the way. As we all comprehend, at a glance, the meaning of the veils in Constantinople, and the nudity of the women in Vienna, so we all infer the position of woman in America from these peculiarities of her dress.
I read thus: The compressed vital organs and the encumbered feet mean, that women are dependent and helpless. Having but little use for breath and locomotion, by a law of nature, they cramp the instruments of breath and locomotion. While the nudity of the arms and bust signifies a slavery to man's passions. No one supposes that when woman becomes a citizen, and man's equal, she will compress her lungs, fetter her legs, or appeal to his passions by any immodest exposure of her person.
LOW NECK AND SHORT SLEEVES.
As I have said but little of the "low neck and short sleeves," I want to add a word in this connection. 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 gland.
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 shouldn't look."
"But," I replied, "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."