who spent four thousand dollars a
year at his tailor's alone, and who used to take hours to tie his
cravat. An undue love of dress is worse than a total disregard of it,
and they love dress too much who "go in debt" for it, who make it their
chief object in life, to the neglect of their most sacred duty to
themselves and others, or who, like Beau Brummel, devote most of their
waking hours to its study. But I do claim, in view of its effect on
ourselves and on those with whom we come in contact, that it is a duty,
as well as the truest economy, to dress as well and becomingly as our
position requires and our means will allow.

Many young men and women make the mistake of thinking that "well
dressed" necessarily means being expensively dressed, and, with this
erroneous idea in mind, they fall into as great a pitfall as those who
think clothes are of no importance. They devote the time that should
be given to the culture of head and heart to studying their toilets,
and planning how they can buy, out of their limited salaries, this or
that expensive hat, or tie or coat, which they see exhibited in some
fashionable store. If they can not by any possibility afford the
coveted article, they buy some cheap, tawdry imitation, the effect of
which is only to make them look ridiculous. Young men of this stamp
wear cheap rings, vermilion-tinted ties, and broad checks, and almost
invariably they occupy cheap positions. Like the dandy, whom Carlyle
describes as "a clothes-wearing man,--a man whose trade, office and
existence consists in the wearing of clothes,--every faculty of whose
soul, spirit, person and purse is heroically consecrated to this one
object," they live to dress, and have no time to devote to self-culture
or to fitting themselves for higher positions.

The overdressed young woman is merely the feminine of the overdressed
young man. The manners of both seem to have a subtle connection with
their clothes. They are loud, flashy, vulgar. Their style of dress
bespeaks a type of character even more objectionable than that of the
slovenly, untidily dressed person. The world accepts the truth
announced by Shakespeare that "the apparel oft proclaims the man"; and
the man and the woman, too, are frequently condemned by the very garb
which they think makes them so irresistible. At first sight, it may
seem hasty or superficial to judge men or women by their clothes, but
experience has proved, again and again, that th