It even seems a little wonderful that people should be able to invent such curious fashions of dressing themselves.
Think, for instance, of the wife of Jean Van Eyck, a celebrated old Dutch painter, who was willing to dress her hair so that she looked like a cat, and, moreover, had her portrait taken in that style, so that future generations might see what a guy she was!
Yes, the picture painted over five hundred years ago hangs to-day in the Academy of Bruges, and the staidest little Belgians laugh when they look at it. You may see it yourselves some day, but, if not, you can at least enjoy this excellent copy, which has been engraved for St. Nicholas from a photograph of the painting. If you look at her face, you will see that in feature she is very much like an ordinary woman of the present day. There is nothing at all distinctive about her countenance. As far as that is concerned, she might just as well have lived now as at any other time.
But if she were to appear in an ordinary evening company dressed in the style in which you see her in the picture, the difference between her and the other ladies would be very striking, to say the least.
THE WOMAN WHO LOOKED LIKE A CAT.
The curious methods of dress in olden times were so many, and were of such infinite variety, that I cannot even allude to them in a little article like this; but you cannot look at very many pictures of the people of by-gone days without seeing some costume which will appear quite funny, if not absolutely absurd.
You need not go very far back either. What could be queerer than the high coat-collars of some of your great-grandfathers, which came up under their ears, while their throats were wrapped in fold after fold of long cravats—or else encircled by a hard, stiff stock,—and the hind-buttons of their coats were away up in the middle of their backs!
But perhaps your great-grandmothers, with the waists of their gowns just under their arms, with their funny long mittens and their great calash bonnets, were just as queer as their husbands.
Now the question comes very naturally to us: Why did these people, as well as the people who came before them, dress in such ridiculous fashions? We know that many of them were very sensible folk, who knew how to do many things as well as we can do them, and some things a great deal better. Mentally and physically the most of them are not surpassed by the people who live now. Then why did not they know enough to dress sensibly and becomingly as we do?