ing the drink trade. During the war their number has
multiplied, indeed in some districts shops have sprung up like mushrooms
in the night.

There is a much deeper importance in this question of dress than usually
is allowed. Irresponsible spending does encourage irresponsible living.

Almost everyone has at one time or another thought of some reform they
would wish to be made in the society in which they live. Now, if I could
have my choice as to any one reform I would choose to be done, it would
be to make it illegal for a tradesman to display for sale any kind of
wearing apparel, dress goods or articles connected with a woman's
toilet, either in shop windows or inside the shops. Nothing must be
shown to any customer until it is asked for. I do really believe this
simple reform would do more to emancipate women, and, through their
emancipation, to liberate men, than any other reform. We pray in our
churches "lead us not into temptation," and everywhere we permit in our
shops the display of goods to tempt the young and the foolish.

An orgy of adornment has been claiming a veritable sacrifice of comfort
and health, possibly even of life. All-night vigils in search of
bargains are frequent at the bi-annual sale-festivals. Policemen have to
restrain the ardent votaries, as they press forward and struggle and
fight to obtain entrance to certain shops, like caged animals fighting
for food. Fashions are followed passionately and with little variety.
Dark heads and golden heads have the hair bobbed or dressed in the same
way, with the same plastered side-curls, and adorned with hats
alarmingly alike, weighted with queer and polychrome ornaments of beads,
wool, tassels, and I know not what, while the face beneath shows one
color of yellowish white, the result of the excessive and unskillful use
of cheap powder. In the snow and slush of the spring, I have seen girls
dressed in a way fit only for the hottest indoor room. The gauze
silk-stockings offering no protection to the tortured feet even when the
boots and shoes were made of more than paper stoutness; while the
fashionable woolen wrap, even the fur collar or coat could not
counterbalance the danger to health from blouses, low-necked and
fashioned of stuff scarcely thicker than cobwebs. Here and there the
many girls, beautiful in quiet uniforms, have served to throw into
sharper contrast the absurdities of the dress of their sisters.

I ask myself how this taste for spe