duality should be the keynote of expression in dress.

Conformity to the foregoing principles in establishing a personal
standard will of necessity prevent slavish imitation and the striving
to reach some other woman's standard which bears again and again such
bitter fruit. The erroneous notion fostered by thousands of American
women, that if you can only look like the women of some social set to
which you aspire you are like them for all social purposes, is a
fallacy, in spite of its general acceptance. We might as well expect
blue eyes, straight noses, or number three shoes to form the basis of
a social group.

The mother or the teacher who bases her instruction in this matter on
the assumption that pretty clothes of necessity breed vanity and all
its attendant evils is merely sowing the seed of her influence upon
stony ground when once the girl discovers her belief. Nature is
telling the girl to make herself beautiful. It is not only useless but
wrong to set ourselves against this instinct. Instead we must show her
what beauty in clothes means, and how to attain it without paying for
it more than she can afford, in money, in time, or in sacrifice of her
spiritual self. The school does its share when it teaches the general
theory of beauty, with practical illustration in study of line and
color schemes. The individual teacher and the mother have to impart
the far more delicate lessons concerning influence and cost--mental,
moral, and spiritual--in other words, the psychology of clothes.

Our girl must grow up fully cognizant of what her clothes cost. When
she desires, as she doubtless will desire, silk petticoats, and an
"up-to-date" hat, and high-heeled shoes, and an absurdly beruffled
dress, and a wonderful array of ribbons, she must discover what each
and every one of these things costs and whether it is worth the price.
The high heels sometimes cost health; the conspicuous dress may cost
the good opinion or the admiration of those who value modesty above
style; the silk petticoat may be bought at the cost of mother's or
father's sacrifice of something needed far more; the trimming on the
hat may have cost the life of a beautiful mother bird and the slow
starvation of her nestlings. Nothing the girl wears costs money only.

She must also learn that fine clothes are out of place on a girl whose
body is not finely cared for; that money is better expended for
quality than for show; and, most of all, that clothes ar