A few sensible women, in different parts of the country, adopted the costume, and farmers’ wives especially proved its convenience.  It was also worn by skaters, gymnasts, tourists, and in sanitariums.  But, while the few realized its advantages, the many laughed it to scorn, and heaped such ridicule on its wearers that they soon found that the physical freedom enjoyed did not compensate for the persistent persecution and petty annoyances suffered at every turn.  To be rudely gazed at in public and private, to be the conscious subjects of criticism, and to be followed by crowds of boys in the streets, were all, to the very last degree, exasperating.  A favorite doggerel that our tormentors chanted, when we appeared in public places, ran thus: 

    “Heigh! ho! in rain and snow,
    The bloomer now is all the go. 
    Twenty tailors take the stitches,
    Twenty women wear the breeches. 
    Heigh! ho! in rain or snow,
    The bloomer now is all the go.”

The singers were generally invisible behind some fence or attic window.  Those who wore the dress can recall countless amusing and annoying experiences.  The patience of most of us was exhausted in about two years; but our leader, Mrs. Miller, bravely adhered to the costume for nearly seven years, under the most trying circumstances.  While her father was in Congress, she wore it at many fashionable dinners and receptions in Washington.  She was bravely sustained, however, by her husband, Colonel Miller, who never flinched in escorting his wife and her coadjutors, however inartistic their costumes might be.  To tall, gaunt women with large feet and to those who were short and stout, it was equally trying.  Mrs. Miller was also encouraged by the intense feeling of her father on the question of woman’s dress.  To him the whole revolution in woman’s position turned on her dress.  The long skirt was the symbol of her degradation.

The names of those who wore the bloomer costume, besides those already mentioned, were Paulina Wright Davis, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Mrs. William Burleigh, Celia Burleigh, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, Helen Jarvis, Lydia Jenkins, Amelia Willard, Dr. Harriet N. Austin, and many patients in sanitariums, whose names I cannot recall.  Looking back to this experiment, I am not surprised at the hostility of men in general to the dress, as it made it very uncomfortable for them to go anywhere with those who wore it.  People would stare, many men and women make rude remarks, boys followed in crowds, with jeers and laughter, so that gentlemen in attendance would feel it their duty to show fight, unless they had sufficient self-control to pursue the even tenor of their way, as the ladies themselves did, without taking the slightest notice of the commotion they created.  But Colonel Miller went through the ordeal with coolness and dogged determination, to the vexation of his acquaintances, who thought one of his duties as a husband was to prescribe his wife’s costume.