“Understand me: I think that draperies held up in the right way by the right woman are an element of real picturesqueness in modern life. But sometimes they are not held up at all.” “Yes, I know. Theoretically a lady does not let her dress drag in an unclean place. But actually there is a good deal of dragging. It is a pity, too, if you men are going to be disturbed by it. There should be consolation for you in the frequent gym suit—which you seldom see, because you are not often permitted to enjoy your present privileges—and in the more frequent bicycle suit. The bicycle has done in one decade what abstract dress reforming would never have accomplished. Sometimes I think that the most important inventions of the century are the bicycle and the shirt waist. Each has had an immensely important influence on the physical and economic situation of women. I have no doubt the bicycle will get full credit, but if no historian mentions the shirt waist the shirt waist will proclaim its own triumph.” [Illustration] “I believe you have been writing a paper on that.” “No, I am not a paper-writing girl. One thing I am sure of: The review of women’s dress during the century will surely dismiss the shirt-waist with a few lines.” “I dare say. It will go unsung, like the plain, average, every-day woman, who is doing so much of the world’s work,—I mean, of course, except on the Woman’s Page. Do you know you explained some things to me so beautifully a moment ago that I am tempted to put your sophistry—I mean your scientific analysis—to the crucial test. Let me do this in a word:—We have spoken of clothes, and we have spoken of transit. Why do women get off a public vehicle backward? I say public vehicle advisedly, for I have seen a woman get on and off a horse properly—assisted. I have seen her get off a bicycle properly, unassisted. I have even seen her get out of a coach properly. But few men have ever seen a woman leave a trolley-car or a railway-coach otherwise than backwards.” [Illustration] “When you say ‘backwards,’ I know that you don’t mean backwards in the sense in which an old lady or a very portly person of any age gets out backwards,—turning about, holding with both hands, and backing off. That was the way Ian Maclaren’s old lady tried to get off the underground train, wasn’t it? and was pulled up the steps at one station after another by men who thought that she was getting on? You mean getting off with the face to the rear, instead of with the face to the engine, the motor, or the horse.” [Illustration] “That is what I do mean.”