AS WE WERE SAYING

By Charles Dudley Warner

BACKLOG EDITION

THE COMPLETE WRITINGS

OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

1904

AS WE WERE SAYING

CONTENTS:  (25 Short Studies)

Rose and chrysanthemum
the red bonnet
the loss in civilization
social screaming
does refinement kill individuality? 
The Directoire gown
the mystery of the sex
the clothes of fiction
the broad A
chewing gum
women in Congress
shall women propose? 
Frocks and the stage
altruism
social clearing-house
dinner-table talk
naturalization
art of governing
love of display
value of the commonplace
the burden of Christmas
the responsibility of writers
the cap and gown
A tendency of the age
A locoed novelist

ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUM

The Drawer will still bet on the rose.  This is not a wager, but only a strong expression of opinion.  The rose will win.  It does not look so now.  To all appearances, this is the age of the chrysanthemum.  What this gaudy flower will be, daily expanding and varying to suit the whim of fashion, no one can tell.  It may be made to bloom like the cabbage; it may spread out like an umbrella—­it can never be large enough nor showy enough to suit us.  Undeniably it is very effective, especially in masses of gorgeous color.  In its innumerable shades and enlarging proportions, it is a triumph of the gardener.  It is a rival to the analine dyes and to the marabout feathers.  It goes along with all the conceits and fantastic unrest of the decorative art.  Indeed, but for the discovery of the capacities of the chrysanthemum, modern life would have experienced a fatal hitch in its development.  It helps out our age of plush with a flame of color.  There is nothing shamefaced or retiring about it, and it already takes all provinces for its own.  One would be only half-married—­civilly, and not fashionably—­without a chrysanthemum wedding; and it lights the way to the tomb.  The maiden wears a bunch of it in her corsage in token of her blooming expectations, and the young man flaunts it on his coat lapel in an effort to be at once effective