The Star. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1893. Fashion and Frugality.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4616, 12 April 1893, Page 2

The Star. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1893. Fashion and Frugality.

All eensible people will endorse the disapproval expressed by the Bey Walter Harper in bis sermon last Sunday evening, of the practice of publishing long lists of the dresses worn by ladies at pnblic gatherings. It surely is not a matter of pnblic importance, calling for notice in the columns of a newspaper, that Miss A. appeared at the racea in a black-and-pink dress, with hat to match ; or that Mrs 8., on the same occasion, wore a costume of corduroy velvet and a black hat. Certainly the publication of such information might please some people. It might please the wearers of the costumes noticed, if their vanity were greater than their sense. It might please some foolish girls who hope that, some day or other, their names and their dresses may receive the notoriety conferred by a line in a newspaper report of a race meeting, garden party or ball. It is, however, not part of the mission of a newspaper to tickle the Vanity of silly people. There ie, moreover, too much reason to fear that the publication of "news" of this sort has a bad effect by encouraging that spirit of extravagance and ostentation which prevails, co far too great an extent, in the community. That it would create in some young women an ambitious desire to dress conspicuously, and bo secure attention in the columns of the papers is only too certain. Whether all the young women who would be so influenced can afford to gratify their vanity in this way may be doubted. There is, indeed, room for doubt whether all the ladies whose toiletteß are described in the papers for the edification of the public, can afford the display they sometimes make. Perhaps their husbands and fathers, or their husbands' and fathers' creditors, might be disposed to reply in the negative. The tendency to extravagance deprecated by the Rev Walter Harper, iB not, it is only fair to state, confined to any one section of the community. One class is disposed to accuse another of it. We hear a good deal about " the improvident habits of the working classes,'* habits which, according to some persons, are responsible ; for the destitution which falls upon the workers and their families in times of scarcity of employment. The phrase is a nicely rounded one, and sounds exceedingly well when used, as it generally is, as an argument against the raising of wages. ! Admitting, however, that some members of the working classes are very improvident, it may be pointed out that folk in other grades of society are not a whit leas so. How often do we find a man who for yeara has enjoyed ah incoine tenfold greater than that of any working man, a highly salaried official, for instance, taking refuge in the Bankruptcy Court if he chance to lose his employment, showing clearly that he has lived above his means, and has made no provision for the "rainy day?" No, the upper classes have no more right to accuse the lower of extravagance than the latter have to blame the upper for the same thing. Both, or many individuals in both, are guilty alike. The upper classes, however, are especially blameworthy because I other people follow their example— copy j them, in fact 1 . Were they to be always J frugal — not, however, stingy— there would be less need for a clergyman to denounce from the pulpit the wearing of expensive dresses.