o to your party, and to-morrow
night, when you are tired and sleepy, if you'll come with your crochet,
and sit in my study, I will read you Christopher Crowfield's
dissertation on dress."

"That will be amusing, to say the least," said Humming-Bird; "and, be
sure, we will all be here. And mind, you have to show good reasons for
disliking the present fashion."

So the next evening there was a worsted party in my study, sitting in
the midst of which I read as follows.

"WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS.

"The first one is _appropriateness_. Colors and forms and modes, in
themselves graceful or beautiful, can become ungraceful and ridiculous
simply through inappropriateness. The most lovely bonnet that the most
approved _modiste_ can invent, if worn on the head of a coarse-faced
Irishwoman bearing a market-basket on her arm, excites no emotion but
that of the ludicrous. The most elegant and brilliant evening dress, if
worn in the daytime in a railroad car, strikes every one with a sense of
absurdity; whereas both these objects in appropriate associations would
excite only the idea of beauty. So, a mode of dress obviously intended
for driving strikes us as _outre_ in a parlor; and a parlor dress would
no less shock our eyes on horseback. In short, the course of this
principle through all varieties of form can easily be perceived. Besides
appropriateness to time, place, and circumstances, there is
appropriateness to age, position, and character. This is the foundation
of all our ideas of professional propriety in costume. One would not
like to see a clergyman in his external air and appointments resembling
a gentleman of the turf; one would not wish a refined and modest scholar
to wear the outward air of a fast fellow, or an aged and venerable
statesman to appear with all the peculiarities of a young dandy. The
flowers, feathers, and furbelows which a light-hearted young girl of
seventeen embellishes by the airy grace with which she wears them, are
simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet of her serious,
well-meaning mamma, who bears them about with an anxious face, merely
because a loquacious milliner has assured her, with many protestations,
that it is the fashion, and the only thing remaining for her to do.

"There are, again, modes of dress in themselves very beautiful and very
striking, which are peculiarly adapted to theatrical representation and
to pictures, but the adoption of which as a part of