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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 27, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 11

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THE DRESS REFORM.

Fashion seems just now to be paving the way for this reform, and bidding fair to make it, so far as length of skirts is concerned, of easy adoption. The editor of Harper's Weekly says that long dresses are “happily” seldom seen at the present time in the streets of N. Y. city; and Prof. O. W. Holmes, of Cambridge, a name with which most of our readers are probably familiar, thus speaks of this encumbrance:
“Why, there isn’t a beast or bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses. Because a queen or duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the streets, picking up and carrying about with her—bah! that’s what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow.
“Show over dirt is the attribute of vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of these women, and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. I would not let one of them into my room without serving them as David did Saul at the cave in the wilderness—cut off his skirts!
“Don’t tell me that a true lady ever sacrifices the duty of keeping all about her sweet and clean, to the wish of making a vulgar show. I don’t believe it of a lady. There are some things that no fashion has any right to touch, and cleanliness is one of them.”