“Under this head, many of our brother editors are aiming their wit and ridicule at those gentlemen who have donned the _shawl_ as a comfortable article of wearing apparel in cold weather. There is a class of men who seem to think it their especial business to superintend the wardrobes of both men and women, and if any dare to depart from their ideas of propriety they forthwith launch out all sorts of witticisms and hard names, and proclaim their opinions, their likes and dislikes, with all the importance of authorized dictators. As to the shawl, it would be well if it could be banished from use entirely, as it is an inconvenient and injurious article of apparel, owing to its requiring both hands to keep it on and thereby tending to contract the chest and cause stooping shoulders. But, if worn at all, men have the same right to it that women have. If they find it convenient that is enough, and no one has a right to object to their wearing it because women wear shawls. Indeed, we think the shawl of right belongs to men as it answers so well to the description of the garment prescribed for them in Deut., xxii. 12: ‘Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture wherewith thou coverest thyself.’ True, men have departed from this injunction in former years, and resigned to women the dress prescribed for themselves and worn by their fathers in olden times. But that is no reason why they should not resume it.” WOMEN MECHANICS. It having been stated that a woman in New Jersey had made a carriage, Mrs. Bloomer comments as follows: “This is told as though it were something wonderful for women to have mechanical genius when, in fact, there are thousands all over the country who could make as good mechanics and handle tools with as much skill and dexterity as men, if they were only allowed to manifest their skill and ingenuity. A girl’s hands and head are formed very much like those of a boy; and, if put to a trade at the age when boys are usually apprenticed, our word for it she will master her business quite as soon as the boy at the same trade, be the trade what it may. Women have taste and ingenuity for something besides washing dishes and sewing on buttons, and so people will find out some day, hard as it is now to believe it.” WOMAN’S DRESS. “Our counsel to every woman is, wear what pleases you best. Pursue a quiet and independent course in the matter, turning neither to the right nor the left to enquire who is pleased or displeased; and, if others do not see fit to keep you company by patterning their dress after yours, you will at least be left in the peaceable enjoyment of your own comfortable attire, and real friends will value you according to your worth, and not according to the length of your train.” WOMEN DRUNKARDS.