It is only one of our rights to dress comfortably. Many have put on the short dress who have never taken any part in the woman's rights movement and who have no idea they are going to be any less womanly by such a change. I feel no more like a man now than I did in long skirts, unless it be that enjoying more freedom and cutting off the fetters is to be like a man. I suppose in that respect we are more mannish, for we know that in dress, as in all things else, we have been and are slaves, while man in dress and all things else is free. I admit that we have "got on the pantaloons," but I deny that putting them on is going to make us any the less womanly or any the more masculine and immodest. On the contrary, I feel that if all of us were less slaves to fashion we would be nobler women, for both our bodies and minds are now rendered weak and useless from the unhealthy and barbarous style of dress adopted, and from the time and thought bestowed in making it attractive. A change is demanded and if I have been the means of calling the attention of the public to it and of leading only a few to disregard old customs and for once to think and act for themselves, I shall not trouble myself about the false imputations that may be cast upon me. [Autograph: Amelia Bloomer] Mrs. Bloomer wore the costume eight years, but very few held out one-fourth of that time. With the exception of Gerrit Smith, all the prominent men, Garrison, Phillips, Channing, May, were bitterly opposed to the short dress and tried to dissuade the women from wearing it by every argument in their power. The costume, however, was adopted as a matter of principle, and for it they suffered a martyrdom which would have made burning at the stake seem comfortable. It requires far more heroism to bear jibes and jeers for one's personal appearance than for one's opinions. No pen can describe what these women endured for the two or three years in which they tried to establish this principle, through such sacrifices as only a woman can understand. So long as they were upheld by the belief that they were giving strength to the cause they loved, they bravely submitted to the persecution, but when they realized that they were injuring instead of helping it, endurance reached its limit. Mrs. Stanton was the first to capitulate, and as she had tried to induce the others to wear the costume so she endeavored to persuade them to abandon it. She wrote to Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone: "I know what you must suffer in consenting to bow again to the tyranny of fashion, but I know also what you suffer among fashionable people in wearing the short dress; and so, not for the sake of the cause, nor for any sake but your own, take it off! We put it on for greater freedom, but what is physical freedom compared with mental bondage?" In agony of spirit as to whether the cause was helped or hindered by wearing it,