p. 10 | SIMPLICITY IN DRESS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 39.

SIMPLICITY IN DRESS.

SOME weeks ago, having occasion to cross from Jersey City to New York, I observed on the opposite side of the ladies’ cabin of the ferry-boat, in which I was seated, two young women of probably eighteen years of age, who appeared to derive excessive entertainment from scanning and criticising the apparel of those of their own sex who successively entered the cabin. Each lady, as she came inside the door, was rapidly “looked over” by the two giddy watchers, who would then exchange meaning glances, arch their eyebrows, and give way to a remark, giggle, or laugh. Evidently, dress was in all their thoughts. In noting their general demeanor, it seemed to me that those girls were such as would surrender everything that they might themselves become the recipients of the favors and bestowments of that fickle and withal merciless goddess—Fashion. For I have not forgotten what was said to me some years ago by a friend who had just returned from the city of Washington, when, in referring to the frivolity and the licentiousness prevailing there, he repeated the remark of a high official—that it was not in most cases mere “badness” that led so many young women astray, as it was the craving to be richly and fashionably dressed, to gratify their love of adornment and display.

A worthy woman said to my wife, when discoursing upon this subject in connection with benevolent work among the poor and the outcast, that upon a certain occasion, dressed in elegant attire, she had made a visit to a home for the fallen. Upon leaving the house, she felt decidedly pleased with herself at the orderly behavior of the inmates, and the seemingly respectful attention with which they had received her moral remarks. Afterward, however, when the matron observed that “the girls were so glad to have you come, for indeed it did their eyes good to feast on so fine a dress, and to see the latest fashion,” she said that she felt humbled to the dust, and as tho she could sink through the floor. The lesson was never forgotten, for she has always since then been careful to dress with simplicity when duty called her to such places.

Corroborative of the above is the following: A repentant female convict in one of our penitentiaries pleadingly said to a benevolent woman visitor, that she wished the ladies who came to the prison to speak and pray with them would dress more simply; for the prisoners’ thoughts were often so drawn away to the visitor’s fine or fashionable attire that they received no good impressions whatever, but rather the reverse. Her own fall had been caused by dress. A visitor to our county prison, looking upon a number of young women who had been locked up overnight for disorderly conduct, wondered that she should see females so finely dressed in such a place. She was given to understand that it was the love of gay attire which, more than aught else, had been the cause of their downfall.—Christian Cynosure.