Chapter 5
439
fluenza, croup, scrofula swellings appearing upon the face and neck,
inflammation and congestion of lungs and brain? Have you studied
from cause to effect? Have you provided for them a simple nutri-
tious diet, free from grease and spices? Have you not been dictated
by fashion in clothing your children? Leaving their arms and limbs
insufficiently protected has been the cause of a vast amount of disease
and premature deaths. There is no reason why the feet and limbs of
your girls, should not be in every way as warmly clad as those of your
boys. Boys, accustomed to exercise out of doors, become inured to
cold and exposure, and are actually less liable to colds when thinly
clad, than the girls, because the open air seems to be their natural
element. Delicate girls, accustom themselves to live in-doors, and in a
heated atmosphere, and yet they go from the heated room out of doors
with their limbs and feet seldom better protected from the cold than
while remaining in a close warm room. The air soon chills their limbs
and feet, and prepares the way for disease.
Your girls should wear the waists of their dresses perfectly loose,
and they should have a style of dress convenient, comfortable and
modest. In cold weather they should wear warm flannel or cotton
drawers, which can be placed inside the stockings. Over these should
be warm lined pants, which may be full, gathered into a band, and
neatly button around the ankle, or taper at the bottom and meet the
shoe. Their dress should reach below the knee. With this style of dress,
one light skirt, or at most two, is all that is necessary, and these should
be buttoned to a waist. The shoes should be thick-soled, and perfectly
comfortable. With this style of dress your girls will be no more in
danger in the open air than your boys. And their health would be much
better, were they to live more out of doors, even in winter, than to be
confined to the close air of a room heated by a stove.
It is a sin in the sight of Heaven for parents to dress their children
as they do. The only excuse that they can make is, it is fashion. They
[472]
cannot plead modesty to thus expose the limbs of their children with
only one covering drawn tight over them. They cannot plead that it is
healthful, or really attractive. Because others will continue to follow
this health and life-destroying practice, it is no excuse for those who
style themselves reformers. Because everybody around you follow a
fashion which is injurious to health, it will not make your sin a whit the