ithin twenty years the weight of the
dress-skirt has been also laid upon the hips. Before that time, our
dress-waists and skirts were made in one. Of late years they have almost
never been so made; that is to say, the shoulders have had, so to speak,
absolutely nothing to do, and the hips and waist, everything. In any
case, skirts should be furnished with buttons, not strings. It is too
easy to draw a string a little tighter than it should be drawn.

Another fashion which our girls have adopted of late years, should be
spoken of. As if they had gone to work to discover the only way in which
pressure could be increased, they have discarded the old fashion of
gartering the stockings, and have buttoned these up by bands of strong
elastic ribbon, to a band placed around the waist. This arrangement, it
seems to me, exhausts all the possibilities of dragging pressure around
the waist, and in this view, it may be looked upon as a negatively
encouraging feature. They have, certainly, in respect to the support of
clothing, done their very worst. They are trying to the full their
powers of endurance, and any change must be for the better.

I was not to speak of external dress, but the skirt of the outside
dress, by the present fashion, must be taken into consideration; and of
its probable weight any skilful person, who has any idea of the weight
of bugles and dry-goods, may make an estimate for himself, though his
estimate will probably fall far short of the truth.[5]

If our girls are to walk the same streets with their brothers, is there
any reason why the soles of their shoes should not be of equal
thickness? And yet no man would think of wearing, at any time, except
for house slippers, soles as thin as those which many of our girls
habitually wear. Boston is much more satisfactory than New York in this
particular, if the contents of the merchant's shelves are a safe index
of the desires of his customers. This is a matter which has been often
spoken of, and yet one which mothers and daughters seem practically to
ignore. Girls should be educated to wear clothing suitable to the time
and place, and then their "habituated instincts" will lead them to
demand and wear shoes of proper thickness.

Enough. It cannot be too often repeated that a girl may call for
anxiety, and often break in health at the time when she develops into a
woman, not because of the special demand for strength made at that time,
but because the demands on