As American women are so fond of copying English ways they should
be willing to take a few lessons on the subject of raiment from
across the water. As this is not intended to be a dissertation on
"How to Dress Well on Nothing a Year," and as I feel the greatest
diffidence in approaching a subject of which I know absolutely
nothing, it will be better to sheer off from these reefs and
quicksands. Every one who reads these lines will know perfectly
well what is meant, when reference is made to the good sense and
practical utility of English women's dress.
What disgusts and angers me (when my way takes me into our surface
or elevated cars or into ferry boats and local trains) is the utter
dissonance between the outfit of most of the women I meet and their
position and occupation. So universal is this, that it might
almost be laid down as an axiom, that the American woman, no matter
in what walk of life you observe her, or what the time or the
place, is always persistently and grotesquely overdressed. From
the women who frequent the hotels of our summer or winter resorts,
down all the steps of the social staircase to the char-woman, who
consents (spasmodically) to remove the dust and waste-papers from
my office, there seems to be the same complete disregard of
fitness. The other evening, in leaving my rooms, I brushed against
a portly person in the half-light of the corridor.
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