Lamentable, indeed, is it to see mothers seriously damaging the constitutions of their children out of compliance with an irrational fashion.  It is bad enough that they should themselves conform to every folly which our Gallic neighbours please to initiate; but that they should clothe their children in any mountebank dress which Le petit Courrier des Dames indicates, regardless of its insufficiency and unfitness, is monstrous.  Discomfort, more or less great, is inflicted; frequent disorders are entailed; growth is checked or stamina undermined; premature death not uncommonly caused; and all because it is thought needful to make frocks of a size and material dictated by French caprice.  Not only is it that for the sake of conformity, mothers thus punish and injure their little ones by scantiness of covering; but it is that from an allied motive they impose a style of dress which forbids healthful activity.  To please the eye, colours and fabrics are chosen totally unfit to bear that rough usage which unrestrained play involves; and then to prevent damage the unrestrained play is interdicted.  “Get up this moment:  you will soil your clean frock,” is the mandate issued to some urchin creeping about on the floor.  “Come back:  you will dirty your stockings,” calls out the governess to one of her charges, who has left the footpath to scramble up a bank.  Thus is the evil doubled.  That they may come up to their mamma’s standard of prettiness, and be admired by her visitors, children must have habiliments deficient in quantity and unfit in texture; and that these easily-damaged habiliments may be kept clean and uninjured, the restless activity so natural and needful for the young is restrained.  The exercise which becomes doubly requisite when the clothing is insufficient, is cut short, lest it should deface the clothing.  Would that the terrible cruelty of this system could be seen by those who maintain it!  We do not hesitate to say that, through enfeebled health, defective energies, and consequent non-success in life, thousands are annually doomed to unhappiness by this unscrupulous regard for appearances:  even when they are not, by early death, literally sacrificed to the Moloch of maternal vanity.  We are reluctant to counsel strong measures, but really the evils are so great as to justify, or even to demand, a peremptory interference on the part of fathers.

Our conclusions are, then—­that, while the clothing of children should never be in such excess as to create oppressive warmth, it should always be sufficient to prevent any general feeling of cold;[6] that, instead of the flimsy cotton, linen, or mixed fabrics commonly used, it should be made of some good non-conductor, such as coarse woollen cloth; that it should be so strong as to receive little damage from the hard wear and tear which childish sports will give it; and that its colours should be such as will not soon suffer from use and exposure.

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