FASHION

I do not like the fashion of your garments.
--_Shakespeare._

I'm sure thou hast a cruel nature and a bloody.
--_Shakespeare._

Two young ladies, fashionably dressed, met each other that afternoon
just in front of our side window, which had been raised to let in the
air. From the warmth of their greeting I saw that they were on terms
of friendly intimacy.

One of the girls stood a little out of the range of my vision,
therefore I could not hear her voice when she talked, if, indeed, she
had a chance to say anything, but the vivacious monologue carried on by
her friend was amply sufficient to show the theme which interested them.

How glibly that pretty creature chattered! How fast the words flew!
How she arched her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders and winked her
eyes and wrinkled her forehead and pursed her rosy lips and tilted her
nose and gesticulated with her slender hand and tapped the pavement
with her umbrella point, passing from each phase of expression to the
next with a rapidity truly wonderful. Occasionally she went through
with these strange grimaces all at once. She was indeed a whirlwind of
language, an avalanche of emotion.

Her voice was high pitched and shrill, so that every one on the street
must have heard her as she exclaimed:

"Oh, Nell, how perfectly lovely your new hat is! Turn around so that I
can see the other side. Oh-h, ah-h, that darling little bird with its
glossy plumage among the velvet is too sweet for anything! If anything
it is prettier than Kate Smith's hat with the thrush's head and wings,
although I'll admit hers is awfully stylish. You ought to see my new
hat. Ah, I tell you it's a beauty; soft crown of silvery stuff, and on
one side a tall aigrette and a dear little cedar-bird, and toward the
back is the cutest, cunningest humming-bird with its tiny green body
and long bill. It looks as if it were ready to fly or to sing. I
selected the trimming for sister May's new hat too. It is brown velvet
and has an oriole on it; you know they are so showy and bright it makes
you almost think you are in the woods. At Madame Oiseau Mort's, where
I get my millinery, there was another hat I had a notion to take. It
was built up with robins' wings and part of a tern was on it too, I
believe--just lovely! but afterward I was glad I didn't buy it, for
that decoration is more common. I counted nine hats in church last
Sunday trimmed with g