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Dress
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no time to sympathize with them in their little disappointments and
trials, or to share in their interests and pursuits.
Almost as soon as they come into the world the children are
subjected to fashion’s influence. They hear more of dress than of
their Saviour. They see their mothers consulting the fashion plates
more earnestly than the Bible. The display of dress is treated as of
greater importance than the development of character. Parents and
children are robbed of that which is best and sweetest and truest in
life. For fashion’s sake they are cheated out of a preparation for the
life to come.
It was the adversary of all good who instigated the invention
of the ever-changing fashions. He desires nothing so much as to
bring grief and dishonor to God by working the misery and ruin
of human beings. One of the means by which he most effectually
accomplishes this is the devices of fashion that weaken the body as
well as enfeeble the mind and belittle the soul.
Women are subject to serious maladies, and their sufferings are
greatly increased by their manner of dress. Instead of preserving
their health for the trying emergencies that are sure to come, they
by their wrong habits too often sacrifice not only health but life,
and leave to their children a legacy of woe in a ruined constitution,
perverted habits, and false ideas of life.
One of fashion’s wasteful and mischievous devices is the skirt
that sweeps the ground. Uncleanly, uncomfortable, inconvenient,
unhealthful—all this and more is true of the trailing skirt. It is
extravagant, both because of the superfluous material required and
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because of the needless wear on account of its length. And whoever
has seen a woman in a trailing skirt, with hands filled with parcels,
attempt to go up or down stairs, to enter a streetcar, to walk through
a crowd, to walk in the rain or on a muddy road, needs no other
proof of its inconvenience and discomfort.
Another serious evil is the wearing of skirts so that their weight
must be sustained by the hips. This heavy weight, pressing upon
the internal organs, drags them downward and causes weakness
of the stomach and a feeling of lassitude, inclining the wearer to
stoop, which further cramps the lungs, making correct breathing
more difficult.