we used leaves of the vintage of July and
August, deeper in their green, with the summer flowers for decoration.
Nothing ever so stirred the heart of man as Mother Eve decked out in her
gown of rose leaves, or hollyhocks; and occasionally when we went
travelling together dressed in our suits of hardy perennials, we were
the cynosure of all eyes. In the Autumn the rich red of the maple gave
us an aspect of gayety in respect to our clothes that was most
picturesque; and then when the winter blasts began to blow, our garments
of pine, cedar and hemlock were not only warm, but appropriate and
becoming. It is true that clothes made of hemlock were not altogether
comfortable at first, having some of the prickly qualities of the
hair-shirt, but the very tittilation of the epidermis by their pointed
spills, sharp sometimes as a needle, served to keep our blood in
circulation, and consequently at all times warm and glowing. And it all
cost us nothing more than the labor of the harvest, but now, all is
different. The use of costly fabrics, woven stuffs, silks, satins and
calicos, has introduced an added element of expense into our daily
lives, and all to no useful purpose. Take your Aunt Jerusha, for
instance. Where Mother Eve enjoyed as many different costumes as there
were trees in the country without cost, all of them becoming, and wholly
adequate, your Aunt Jerusha has to be satisfied with three or four gowns
of indifferent fit, made by the village seamstress at an average cost of
thirty or forty dollars apiece. A sheath-gown, costing Jerusha
seventy-five dollars, in the distance, gives no more of an impression in
the matter of figure to an admiring world than your original grandmother
used to make without any further sartorial embellishment than an
ostrich feather in her hair, and as for the men--well, if you see any
value in the change in men's garments over those which prevailed in my
day, you can see what I cannot, and what is going to be the result? The
time will come when tailors' bills will be regarded as a curse. Fathers
of families who, under the scheme of dress invented by myself, could
keep a large number of growing boys appropriately clad, will sooner or
later be forced into bankruptcy by the demands of tailors under these
new methods now coming into vogue. In the train of this will come also a
love of display, and in the course of years you will find men judged not
by the natural stature of their manhood, but by t