For instance, in your mother's
day girls talked of a pair of gloves,--now they talk of a pack; then it
was a bonnet summer and winter,--now it is a bonnet spring, summer,
autumn, and winter, and hats like monthly roses,--a new blossom every
few weeks."
"And then," said my wife, "every device of the toilet is immediately
taken up and varied and improved on, so as to impose an almost monthly
necessity for novelty. The jackets of May are outshone by the jackets of
June; the buttons of June are antiquated in July; the trimmings of July
are _passees_ by September; side-combs, back-combs, puffs, rats, and all
sorts of such matters, are in a distracted race of improvement; every
article of feminine toilet is on the move towards perfection. It seems
to me that an infinity of money must be spent in these trifles, by
those who make the least pretension to keep in the fashion."
"Well, papa," said Jennie, "after all, it's just the way things always
have been since the world began. You know the Bible says, 'Can a maid
forget her ornaments?' It's clear she can't. You see, it's a law of
Nature; and you remember all that long chapter in the Bible that we had
read in church last Sunday, about the curls and veils and tinkling
ornaments and crimping-pins, and all that.
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