He said: "I am a ladies' man; I never pass a woman with whom I am acquainted without raising my hat. I do not keep my seat in the cars while ladies are standing, as I see gentlemen do in Boston.
"Yes, I am the most obedient and devoted servant of the ladies, gentlemen of the Convention, but when you would introduce them to membership in the American Institute of Homoeopathy, I say no! never!"
It is this making woman the occasion for a display of man's gallantries, with this contemptuous disregard of her claims to common justice; it is this spirit which passes the woman, and devotes itself to a description of her dress, to outlining her "low corsage," her "magnificent bust," etc., etc.
If I were a girl, and one of these besmeared, bescented, befaddled, "ladies' man" puppies were to condescend to perform his whining and barking for my special delectation, I should mildly suggest to him the infinite wisdom of bestowing his precious slaver upon some small, gentle poodle.
EXCESSIVE ORNAMENTATION.
The trimming mania is frightful. What do you think of one hundred and twenty yards,—three hundred and sixty feet,—four thousand three hundred and twenty inches of ribbon in the trimming of one dress?
I wish I could command for an hour the pen of a Jenkins, and give the names of the various ribbons and shades of ribbons, of the laces, their origin, style, and value. (Each kind of lace has a history, which is dear to the heart of the devotee of fashion.) I wish I could describe the hundred and one crimps and frills and things. I wish I could command the pen of one of these amazing writers about woman's dress. I would give you ten pages of it.
I say again, that the trimming mania has become insufferable. Unless a woman has a dressmaker, she must be the veriest slave. She must be at it morning, noon and night.
Gather in one place all the artists, authoresses, and women of finest and highest culture, and how many of them do you suppose could be bribed to go into the street all rigged out in ribbon, gimp, frills, edgings, ruches, fringes, satins, velvets, buttons, nail-heads, etc., etc., etc.
I have met many of the women who may be classed as above, and I cannot now recall one who was fashionably trimmed.