THE REFORM DRESS by JOS. CLARKE.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 31, 1868

THE REFORM DRESS.

By JOS. CLARKE.

THE January number of the Health Reformer, contains a fine representation of the reform dress, as worn at the Health Institute, and adopted by the sisters of the S. D. Adventist church.

This style is certainly beautiful, because it is natural, and becoming. It is conducive to health, and must be very easy and comfortable. We commend the good taste of those who have adopted it; it is the only style we have ever seen, faultless in all respects. Beautiful, and neat, and comfortable as it is, and coming as it does from so high a source no doubt some see only deformity in it: perhaps, if it had emanated from the ladies of Paris, or London, or New York, it might have more favor with such.

The taste may be perverted, as well as the judgment; the bigoted errorist, holds the first and seventh, to be one and the same day; another with perverted taste, admires the wasplike waist, the trailing skirt, and the feeble step; the Chinese belle, is complacent over her little club foot; and the flat-head Indian, thanks his parents for the pains they took to flatten his head, while it was soft and pliant; each of these is confident, his or her way is refined and becoming.

Nature is baffled; the human frame is forced out of shape, in order to bring it into subjection to the goddess of fashion, who, despite her intimacy with the vilest characters in the world's great cities, is yet worshiped, by many professing godliness.

JOS. CLARKE.