igh Church
Episcopalian who had embroidered two altar cloths, and that suede
gloves show a yielding but contradictory nature.

Clothes are, undoubtedly, indices of character and taste, as well as a
sop to conventionality, but this only when one has the wherewithal to
browse at will in the department store. Many a woman with ermine
tastes has only a rabbit-fur pocket-book, and thus her clothes wrong
her in the sight of gods and women, though men know nothing about it.

Once upon a time there was a notion to the effect that women dressed
to please men, but that idea has long since been relegated to the
limbo of forgotten things.

Not one man in a thousand can tell the difference between Brussels
point at thirty dollars a yard, and imitation Valenciennes at ten or
fifteen cents a yard which was one of the "famous Friday features in
the busy bargain basement."

But across the room, yea, even from across the street, the eagle eye
of another woman can unerringly locate the Brussels point and the
mock Valenciennes.

A man knows silk by the sound of it and diamonds by the shine. He will
say that his heroine "was richly dressed in silk." Little does he wot
of the difference between taffeta at eighty-five cents a yard and
broadcloth at four dollars. Still less does he know that a white
cotton shirt-waist represents financial ease, and a silk waist of
festive colouring represents poverty, since it takes but two days to
"do up" a white shirt-waist in one sense, and thirty or forty cents to
do it up in the other!

One listens with wicked delight to men's discourse upon woman's
clothes. Now and then a man will express his preference for a tailored
gown, as being eminently simple and satisfactory. Unless he is married
and has seen the bills for tailored gowns, he also thinks they are
inexpensive.

It is the benedict, wise with the acquired knowledge of the serpent,
who begs his wife to get a new party gown and let the tailor-made go
until next season. He also knows that when the material is bought, the
expense has scarcely begun, whereas the ignorant bachelor thinks that
the worst is happily over.

In _A Little Journey through the World_ Mr. Warner philosophised thus:
"How a woman in a crisis hesitates before her wardrobe, and at last
chooses just what will express her innermost feelings!"

If all a woman's feelings were to be expressed by her clothes, the
benedicts would immediately encounter financial shipwreck. On accou