It is at once singular and amusing to notice how surely all women’s dress-reform agitations move in the same groove--that of a more or less close imitation of man’s attire. Even fashions which are not ostensible ‘reforms’ have a decided tendency to make for masculinity. The girls who, some few years since, cut their hair short--like the boys; who wore bowler hats, shirt-fronts, men’s collars and neckties; who carried walking-sticks, or that extraordinary combination of walking-stick and sunshade known facetiously as a ‘husband-beater;’ who affected tailor-made frocks, donned man-like jackets, and adopted a masculine gait, were not accredited reformers with a Mission, but they showed, excellently well, the spirit of the age, and if they were wanting in thoroughness, why, Lady Harberton, with her ‘divided skirts,’ was a very Strafford for thoroughness in her particular line. Divided skirts were introduced to the notice of the public some ten years ago by Viscountess Harberton and a Society of Dress Reformers, calling themselves, possibly on _lucus a non lucendo_ principles, first a ‘National’ Society, and at a later period arrogating the title of ‘Rational.’ It may seem matter for ridicule that an obscure coterie of grandams should adopt such a grandiose title as the first, or that they should, by using the ‘Rational’ epithet, be convicted of allowing the inference that they considered every woman irrational who did not adhere to their principles; but, like all ‘reformers,’ they were without humour and consumed with a deadly earnestness. They (unlike the rest of the world) saw nothing for laughter in the public discussions which they initiated, by which they sought to show that corsets were not only useless but harmful, and that the petticoat might advantageously be discarded for trousers worn underneath an ordinary skirt, somewhat after the fashion that obtains in riding costumes. [Illustration: THE RATIONAL DRESS. ]