That people should wear any clothing which is not exactly suited to their need and honest desires seems too ridiculous to be true, and yet that is exactly what most people do, usually without thinking of the matter. How many men really like to wear a stiff collar, or a dress suit? Or how many like to wear dark, thick suits in summer instead of a kind of glorified pajama? And women! How long will they continue to wear corsets? Not one really wants to. But it is not so much these blatant ills of dress which harass one. It is the useless accessories, the keeping up of irrelevant trimmings and embellishments, the elaborate fastenings, which are the real annoyance. Not for an instant is it suggested that people should cease to make themselves attractive in appearance, or that uniformity of dress ought to be adopted. On the contrary, a greater individuality is to be desired, but, above all, comfort and convenience. One should be able to wear what one pleases without coercion of any kind or the impertinence of criticism from some one whose tastes happen to differ. To one man a collar may be a comfort; to another it is an abomination. And there should be no rule, written or unwritten, which compels either to sacrifice his comfort and tastes to the other. The true feminist recognizes that one woman may like to swathe herself in draperies, and the next may prefer the plainest, freest form of garment; and that one should be made to feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease because big financial interests have approved one rather than the other, is an outrage upon the right to mental and physical liberty! GERMOPHOBIA HELEN S. GRAY Several years ago Dr. Charles B. Reed of Chicago obtained considerable notoriety by the invention of a cat-trap or gibbet to be baited with catnip and operated in back yards. The accounts in the newspapers related that he had found four dangerous kinds of germs on a cat’s whiskers and was therefore urging the extermination of cats as a menace to health; that Dr. William McClure, of Wesley Hospital, was examining microscopically hairs from cats’ fur to ascertain how many different kinds of germs there were on it; and that the secretary of the Chicago Board of Health had issued a statement that cats are “extremely dangerous to humanity.” From Topeka came the report that six different kinds of deadly germs had been found on a cat’s fur and that the Board of Health had in consequence issued a mandate that Topeka cats must be sheared or killed! But why stop with shearing them? There are germs on their skins. And now public penholders in banks and post-offices are under suspicion; an investigation is being made by the Kansas Board of Health, _The St. Louis Republic_ states, and individual penholders may have to be supplied. From time to time a health board official or some other doctor gives out a statement for publication condemning handshaking as a dangerous and reprehensible practice.