EVILS OF OVER-DRESSING.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3974, 10 December 1873, Page 3

EVILS OF OVER-DRESSING.

The vice of overdressing is probably more general in New York than in most other large cities, and it hoB increased so much of late years that the newspapers have sought to check it. The " New York Sunday Press," in writing of excess in dross, says : — Of all the snares that beset young girls, none are more dangerous than the lore of dress. Mothers should be on the alert to guard their daughters ngainst it. Elder sisters should not forgot that young eyes are looking at them as examples, ond are much more impressed by the living models before them than by any amount of " good advice." Nothing is of greater importance than the companiouship permitted to young girls. Not only do over-drc'ssed companions induce the wish in themselves to overdress, but if the gratification is denied, " covetousness, envy, batred.and all uncharitableness" are very likely to find birth in hearts that might be otherwise full of better feelings. An undue love of overdress has been only too frequently the cause of ruin of both body and soul. Even in very young children the passion for overdressing is seen. It is the fault of the silly moth or?. Little girls, with the exception that their dresses aro shorter, are now clothed in all the expensive elaborations that distinguish the attire of grown women. Their skirts are covered with quantities of ornament?, trimmings, frills, and double skirts. Their feet are encased in the most costly b:ots, and their ancles dislocated with high heels. The hats they wear are in accordance with the rest of the toilette, and even padding and hair dye are not unfrequently used, and deception, cunning, fraud, inculcated along with vanity and reckless expenditure*. One would expect to find neat plain dress in Sundayif anywhere. Yefc we are often pained to see children come decorated with feuthers, gilt ornaments, quantities of ribbons, silk mantles, and double skirts. Thus arrayed, it is not wonderful that a general spirit of rivalry is engendered, scholar vying with scholar, not in the acquirement of learning or piety, but envying one another's finery, or puffed up with vanity at the possession of some special gewgaw, and sneering at their less overdressed companions. We have be.rd mothers, with tears in their eyes, complain that they could no longer send their children to be instructed on Sundnys, because they wore unable to buy new or finer clotbinjr, and the children were persocuted on account of their ehabbiness — nay, even ridiculed for appearing constantly in the same bonnet — neat, but not very smart. What do the mothers of these children contemp'ate for them? They are to be the servants, work-girls, eventually the wives of mechanics or small tradesmen ; how much better to attire them in simple neatness, to inculcate attention to instruction, to discipline their characters to moral strength, and to teach them to lay by the surplup, now wasted, for some better purpose — to aid their start in life, or to help father and mother on a rainy d»y. " But they mn9t do as others do, or they will be despised," is the foolish and often fatal argument. The example and persuasion and firm perseverance of one good mother would be sure to induce many who knew her— some, perhaps, who ridicule loudest —to follow her example.