A desperate effort was made by a large number to force the community to adopt a uniform for both men and women. It was fiercely opposed. Every woman who believed herself good looking refused to listen to any argument on the subject.
It was necessary at once, however, to formulate some sort of code. A number of men had been coming into the dining-room in their shirt sleeves. Some of them apparently never combed their hair or changed their linen. A number of women had gotten into the habit of coming into the dining-room in loose wrappers of variegated colors and without corsets.
The Bard of Ramcat was particularly severe in his public criticism of these women in the general assembly of the Brotherhood.
"In the name of beauty, I protest!" he cried. "Beauty is an attribute of God. It is woman's first duty to be beautiful, and if she isn't, at least to make man think she is. I insist that she shall have the widest liberty in the choice of dress. Only let her be careful that she is beautiful!"
The poet was heartily applauded, and a resolution was passed which embodied his ideas, approving the widest freedom of choice in dress, approving especially unconventional forms of dress, provided always the ideal of beauty was held inviolate.
In his speech advocating the immediate passage of the resolution the Bard urged every woman to outdo herself in the struggle for supreme beauty of appearance at the weekly ball on Friday evening.
His resolutions and speech bore surprising fruit.
When the festivities were at their height a crowd of fifteen pretty girls suddenly swept into the brilliantly lighted ball-room in tights! The sensation was so instantaneous and overwhelming the music stopped with a crash. The orchestra thought somebody had yelled fire.
The girls in their beautiful but unconventional dress tried to appear unconcerned. But even the Bard was appalled at the results.
The pretty young chorus-girls had taken him at his word. They had always cherished a secret desire to live in an unconventional real world, where they could have a chance to be themselves, without the hideous skirts of conventional society veiling their beauty. They had brought these costumes with them and joined the new moral world in the firm faith that their ideal would be realized. It had come very slowly, but it had come at last.