The Discomforts of Modern Clothing.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 95, 25 April 1891, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Discomforts of Modern Clothing.

The best tests of the discomforts and inconveniences of our attire would be to take an untamed Indian of the plains and subject him to the adjustment upon his own person of the various articles worn by civilised men and women. In knickerbockers, a flannel shirt, soft hat, long stockings, and easy shoes, or a loose tennis or gymnastic drees, he would probably find that existence still had charms for him. The conventional business suit of man, with its hard hat, stiff collar and unyielding shoes would probably extort a few yells of agony. The suspenders would hurt, the coat would perhaps cramp and annoy, but lifewould bs endurable to him. Than pufc him into tha garb of woman— feeble, delicate, gossamer woman—into the tight corsets; which would jam his elastic iribs in'tb '$&s** his writhing stomach up against- his wob: bline heart and gasping lungs, his whole nutritive apparatus, up, down, backward, sidewise, anywhere, so that 19in of steel and whalebone should compass his 25in middle; add the dozen or more articles, with their aggregations of bands, strings, buttons, hooks, loops, clasps, and pina; place about him zone after zone of tight bandages, from which are suspended dozens and dozens of yards of gathered, puckered, pleated, and festooned material ; tilt his body all out of plumb by fastening under his heels a wooden peg two inches high, and crush his toes into the space of a good-sized thimble; weigh him down with a long, heavy outside wrap; perch a bonnet upon his head, and stretch a spotted veil over his eyes ; put his hand into tight kid gloves, and into these a pocket-book and an umbrella; then send him out for business or for pleasure o» a moderately wet morning or afternoon; let him keep his long, flapping , skirts, his shoes, and his ankles dry and clean, his feathers and bangs in curl, and his temper unruffled. Then ask him when he gets to you, if he lives to do so, which he would rather be—a lovely civilised woman or a howling savage, and see what he will say. —Dr. Lucy M. Hall, in 'Health. ,