he matter of dress, they have walked the thorny paths of
experience. They know the cruel cost of everything they wear,--a cost
which in this country is artificially maintained by a high protective
tariff,--and they are not to be cajoled by that delusive word
"simplicity," being too well aware that it is, when synonymous with
good taste, the consummate success of artists, and the crowning
achievement of wealth. Some years ago there appeared in one of the
English magazines an article entitled, "How to Dress on Thirty Pounds
a Year. As a Lady. By a Lady." Whereupon "Punch" offered the following
light-minded amendment: "How to Dress on Nothing a Year. As a Kaffir.
By a Kaffir." At least a practical proposition.

Mr. Henry James has written some charming paragraphs on the symbolic
value of clothes, as illustrated by the costumes worn by the French
actresses of the Comedie,--women to whose unerring taste dress
affords an expression of fine dramatic quality. He describes with
enthusiasm the appearance of Madame Nathalie, when playing the part
of an elderly provincial bourgeoise in a curtain-lifter called "Le
Village."

"It was the quiet felicity of the old lady's dress that used to charm
me. She wore a large black silk mantilla of a peculiar cut, which
looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old wardrobe
where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet, adorned
with handsome black silk loops and bows. The extreme suggestiveness,
and yet the taste and temperateness of this costume, seemed to me
inimitable. The bonnet alone, with its handsome, decent, virtuous
bows, was worth coming to see."

If we compare this "quiet felicity" of the artist with the absurd
travesties worn on our American stage, we can better understand the
pleasure which filled Mr. James's heart. What, for example, would
Madame Nathalie have thought of the modish gowns which Mrs. Fiske
introduces into the middle-class Norwegian life of Ibsen's dramas?
No plays can less well bear such inaccuracies, because they depend
on their stage-setting to bring before our eyes their alien aspect,
to make us feel an atmosphere with which we are wholly unfamiliar.
The accessories are few, but of supreme importance; and it is
inconceivable that a keenly intelligent actress like Mrs. Fiske
should sacrifice _vraisemblance_ to a meaningless refinement. In the
second act of "Rosmersholm," to take a single instance, the text
calls for a morning wrapper,