Now the question comes very naturally to us: Why did these people, as well as the people who came before them, dress in such ridiculous fashions? We know that many of them were very sensible folk, who knew how to do many things as well as we can do them, and some things a great deal better. Mentally and physically the most of them are not surpassed by the people who live now. Then why did not they know enough to dress sensibly and becomingly as we do? In reply to this I will say that your great-grandfather and your great-grandmother, unless they belonged to some religious sect which regulated the clothes of its members, would have dressed exactly as your father and mother now do, if it had been the fashion in their day. And if you had seen their portraits, dressed in clothes of the present day (which, had those old people worn them, would have been out of fashion long before you were born), you would have thought they looked perfectly ridiculous. The truth of the matter is, that with a great many of us the attractive and desirable qualities of clothes depend entirely upon their relations to the current styles or fashions. We think everything unbecoming and ugly excepting those styles; and no matter how absurd the present fashion may be, there are not ten persons out of a thousand who, when they become used to them, do not admire them and follow them to the extent of their ability. There are few of you who are not old enough to remember fashions of dress, which at one time you and every one else considered very stylish and becoming, and which now would make a perfect fright of any one who would be bold enough to wear them. Indeed, were a fine lady to make her appearance in the streets of one of our large cities dressed in the hoops and wide skirts in which she was so fashionable and attractive a few years ago, the street boys would hoot her, and she might walk about all day without meeting a single person who would think that there was anything whatever to be said in favor of such a costume. Of course, some fashions are uglier and more absurd than others, and it is not strange that we wonder how sensible people could have endured them; but if these very styles were to become fashionable again, most of us would adopt them. If, in a few years, it should become the fashion for ladies to dress their hair like that of the good wife of Jean Van Eyck, I feel quite certain that nearly all the fashionable ladies you know would go about looking very much like cats. This may seem a libelous assertion; but if you will keep a watch on the fashions, I think you will find I am correct, provided the Van Eyck style comes up. TOMMY'S DREAM; OR, THE GEOGRAPHY DEMON. BY LAURA E. RICHARDS. I HATE my geography lesson! It's nothing but nonsense and names; To bother me so every morning, It's really the greatest of shames.