DRESS
I think that we dress altogether wrongly, and would point out as an artist to artists the ugliness of it: to the broad masses whom we delight to serve, the folly and unwholesomeness of it.
I hold that we eat and drink altogether wrongly, and would like to point out as an artist to artists the brain-clogging effect of it: to the people, the expense and unmanliness of our customs. I would fain, while exposing my own follies, hold up a mirror to others, showing as a warning where I cannot be a guide.
In decoration, my second subject, I would fain point you directly to nature; look straight at her, each with the desiring eyes of a lover, and she will satisfy you all.
I suppose, in spite of the melancholy groans of some and the cynical snarls of other dyspeptic subjects, that we all agree, without exception, to love this life when we can have it tolerably free from pain, or the pinching of poverty, and find this much-abused world quite good enough for us and our purposes.
The weather is never altogether just what we would like it to be: it is either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold, to be exactly to our taste; the direction of the wind bothers us—in fact, there is a happy medium which we cannot strike; and yet, with all the shortcomings, I doubt if there is a single sane Christian who would like to go to heaven one second before his or her time. Of course, we except the unfortunate insane, who rush away on the spur of an evil moment.
For my own part, I wish I could live a thousand years, and envy the constitutions of the antediluvians, who could take time to do their work properly, although I will confess to moments—neither few nor far between—when I make myself as miserable and disagreeable as anyone could imagine, and yet live.
The earth is all right about me, the weather is passable, the machinery which moves me along would be perfection, if custom, and fashion, and general debility of will would only let it alone, and permit it to do its work in its own way, and with its own conditions.
Nature endows us with tastes as simply correct as the horse’s; and custom teaches us to endure, with martyr persistence, habits that are as difficult and dangerous to learn as they are hard to break from.