Some ask, what, indeed, shall we do if we discard all fashion? Our reply is, to do as the Quakers do. They certainly look quite as presentable and pretty in their "plain clothes" as do any other class of society. But I hear the answer: "Yes, and is not their style fashion?" We grant that it is, but at the same time insist that it is both a sensible, economical, and becoming one; and such a fashion—a fashion of common sense—is what we indorse, having not the least objection to that sort. Like, the old-time mode of cutting boys' hair by use of a bowl clapped over the head, it was a fashion, but a very simple, inexpensive, and proper one enough, considering the circumstances. Now they must have the assistance of a professional artist. Singular now one extreme follows another.
Not until quite a recent date were we inclined to advocate "women's rights," which is but another name—as modernly interpreted—for the ballot. Now we are persuaded that it would be wise for the States to concede this, and thereby open a new channel to them for thought, at once weakening their hold on fashion, and enlarging their views of life and its requirements. Good to the race, it would seem, must come of any change whereby the rising generation shall have less of fashion and its attendant evils, and more of health, with its accompanying blessings.
How few of perfectly healthy girls do we see among all those with whom we are each severally acquainted. Tight lacing, began in early childhood, is one of the chief of evils. You ask a girl of twelve years if she is not too tightly dressed, and the reply is "no;" and the mother is sure to argue that if the girl does not complain it is none of the father's business to meddle. The fact is, the child has been gradually brought to that state of unconsciousness of any discomfort by having been subjected to this abominable process from a very tender age, and being continued each year, the waist is scarce half the natural size it should have been at womanhood. Take a country girl who has grown up free from this practice, and has a well-developed frame, and put on her the harness of her fashionable sister, and draw it to the point the latter is accustomed to wear it, and you shall see whether there is any wincing or no. The argument of these unreasoning mothers is that of the Chinese, who dwarf their children's feet by beginning at an early period, and, doubtless, if these youths were similarly questioned, they, too, would complain of no inconvenience.
In the management and care of children, fond parents seem, in these later years, little else than a bundle of absurdities. For instance, take children of from three to ten years, and you shall see, in a majority of cases, when dressed for the street, their backs ladened with fold on fold of the warmest clothing, while their poor knees are both bare and blue.
Ah! we forget, perhaps, that the physician and undertaker must live; and then the army of nurses and others, too, are to be provided for, quite as the fashionable lady would make reply to any impertinence in matters of her dress, that it kept an army of sewing-girls employed who would otherwise be left to starve!
One of our most vigorous writers, treating this subject, says:—
"Showy wardrobe, excessive work with the needle, where it is done to gratify a taste for display, or morbid fancy for exquisite work, is a crime. Shoulders are bent, spines are curved, the blood, lacking its supplies of oxygen, loses vitality and creeps sluggishly through the veins, carrying no vivid color to the cheek and lips, giving no activity to the brain, no fire to the eye. Let women throw away their fancy work, dispense to a degree with ruffles and tucks, and, in a dress that will admit of a long breath, walk in the clear bracing air.
"Mothers should begin early to lay the foundations of health. Children should have plenty of vigorous, joyous exercise out of doors. They should have romping, rollicking fun every day, at the same time giving exercise to every part of the body, and a healthy tone to the spirits. The body and soul are so intimately blended that exercise for the one is of little value when the other is repressed. Thus the limbs will become well knit and beautifully rounded, the flesh will be firm and rosy, and the whole frame will be vigorous and elastic—vital to the finger tips. Better that our youth should have a healthy physique, even if they cannot read before they are ten years old, as in this case they would soon overtake and outstrip the pale, narrow-chested child who is the wonder of the nursery and the Sunday-school. Children are animals that are to be made the most of. Give them ample pasturage, and let them be as free as is consistent with the discipline they need; keep the girls out of corsets and tight shoes, give them plain food, fresh air, and plenty of sleep."
Nothing invites disease so much as the present style of living among the well-to-do people. Nearly everything tends among this class to deteriorate general health, and, since their numbers have within the last decade greatly increased, the influence on the country must be markedly detrimental, and, but for the steady flow of vitalizing blood from the Old World, the whole Yankee race would ere long, inevitably disappear.
We have dwelt in this chapter at considerable length on the importance of right training and education of the young, and especially of girls, though no more than the subject seems to demand. Boys are naturally more out of doors, since their love of out-of-door life is greater than that of girls, and their sports all lead them into the open air, and by this means they more easily correct the constitutional and natural tendencies to disease, if any there be. Then, too, the iron hand of fashion has not fastened itself so relentlessly upon them as to dwarf their bodies and warp their souls, as it has in some degree the gentler and better and more tender half of mankind, to whom the larger share of this chapter seems the more directly to apply.