is the one subject that they really do think about. It
is the only topic they ever get thoroughly interested in, and they talk
about it all day long. If you see two women together, you may bet your
bottom dollar they are discussing their own or their friends' clothes.
You notice a couple of child-like beings conversing by a window, and you
wonder what sweet, helpful words are falling from their sainted lips. So
you move nearer and then you hear one say:

"So I took in the waist-band and let out a seam, and it fits beautifully
now."

"Well," says the other, "I shall wear my plum-colored body to the
Jones', with a yellow plastron; and they've got some lovely gloves at
Puttick's, only one and eleven pence."

I went for a drive through a part of Derbyshire once with a couple of
ladies. It was a beautiful bit of country, and they enjoyed themselves
immensely. They talked dressmaking the whole time.

"Pretty view, that," I would say, waving my umbrella round. "Look at
those blue distant hills! That little white speck, nestling in the
woods, is Chatsworth, and over there--"

"Yes, very pretty indeed," one would reply. "Well, why not get a yard of
sarsenet?"

"What, and leave the skirt exactly as it is?"

"Certainly. What place d'ye call this?"

Then I would draw their attention to the fresh beauties that kept
sweeping into view, and they would glance round and say "charming,"
"sweetly pretty," and immediately go off into raptures over each other's
pocket-handkerchiefs, and mourn with one another over the decadence of
cambric frilling.

I believe if two women were cast together upon a desert island, they
would spend each day arguing the respective merits of sea-shells and
birds' eggs considered as trimmings, and would have a new fashion in
fig-leaves every month.

Very young men think a good deal about clothes, but they don't talk
about them to each other. They would not find much encouragement. A fop
is not a favorite with his own sex. Indeed, he gets a good deal more
abuse from them than is necessary. His is a harmless failing and it
soon wears out. Besides, a man who has no foppery at twenty will be
a slatternly, dirty-collar, unbrushed-coat man at forty. A little
foppishness in a young man is good; it is human. I like to see a young
cock ruffle his feathers, stretch his neck, and crow as if the whole
world belonged to him. I don't like a modest, retiring man. Nobody
does--not really, however much they may prate