of the body, and other absurdities, aside from the vast expense entailed upon the whole people, are perfectly astounding and outrageous beyond belief.  Let us examine a moment and see if we are presuming.  Granting that every lady in the land expends on an average of but ten dollars each year for the fashionable make-up of her wardrobe; that this mite goes for style, and necessary little etceteras growing out of it, and not in any way for the material itself, which is really the mountain of difficulty.  Now, if there are twenty millions of women in our country, it would give the sum of two hundred millions of dollars annually expended for style.  What a noble charity this would establish every recurring year.  What a relief to pauperism it would form, and that too without the sacrifice of anything but “style.”  What a relief to struggling, disheartened men, whose lives are those of slaves, and families who pinch and starve themselves that they may possess the magical key to fashionable society!  But what is fashionable society that it should have such charms for common and honest people?  We give in answer what was given us by one who had had for many years access to it.  He said, “Struggle to avoid it as the worst of calamities.”  It had swept him and his family from a position of comparative affluence to one of misfortune and distress.  Fashion is the parent of both—­“cussedness” and consumption.

We know some young ladies are personally disgusted with all this “fuss and feathers,” who at the same time insist that, if they did not follow the lead of “society” they would be thrown in the background, as at most entertainments those who have carefully and elaborately arrayed themselves receive the lion’s share of attention and compliment from the opposite sex, whose good opinion and company they wish to share.  While there is more of truth in this response than most gentlemen are willing at first to admit, yet, observant people have ever noted the fact that, notwithstanding these fashionable and polite addresses at public assemblies between the beaux and butterflies, the end of the levee usually terminates the hobnobbing.  The “gay ladie” has had, quite likely, her hour of triumph over her more modest, quiet, and unassuming rival, now in the background, but whom—­when the young man is ready to proffer his hand and fortune—­is most likely to be led to the front, blushing with her becoming and well-deserved honors, leaving the doting mothers, with their dear daughters, to reflect on the “strange ways of you men.”

If the world sees, it does not fully believe what it sees, else a change would surely come.  The fact is, while men, especially the young men, delight to do honor to these devotees of the milliner and mantua-maker, they cannot—­those who have a fair share of good sense—­afford to marry them.  Their means, their prospects, and their happiness forbid it, and they are right in this conclusion.  They prefer to unite their