The word fashion is used as a convenient generic term for a multitude of related stupidities and cowardices in character and conduct, and for the results of them. To say that one must “follow the fashions” is to say that one is compelled to be stupid and cowardly. What compels? Under what stress of compulsion are women in making themselves hideous in one way or another all the time—each year a different kind of hideousness? Who commands them to get their shoulders above their heads, blow up their sleeves and elongate their lapels to suggest the collar-points of a negro minstrel? When have not men tried to prevent them from doing these things and remain content with a tideless impulchritude—an ugliness having slight and slow vicissitudes, such as themselves are satisfied withal? Doubtless women’s quarrel with their outward and visible appearance is a natural and reasonable sentiment, a noble discontent; for they do look scarecrows, and no mistake; but the effect which they have at any given time achieved, and at which they afterward are aghast, is not to be bettered by eternal tinkering with the same tools. In new brains and a new taste lies their only hope of repair; lacking which, they would do well to let Time the healer touch our wounded eyes, and inurement bring toleration. “The iron hand of custom and tradition,” wails one of the female disputants, “makes a pitiable race of us.” What a way to put it! Could it not occur to this gentle creature that if we were not a pitiable race—pitiable for our brute stupidity—custom and tradition would not be iron-handed? We are savages in the same sense that the N’gamwanee is a savage, who will not appear at any festival without his belly painted a joyous sky-blue. But among us none is so amusing a savage as she who squeals like a pig in a gate at “the tyranny of custom,” when nothing is pinching her. III