When a family comes to us, from England or France or any alien land, we acknowledge the hideous brotherhood, and offer our welcoming hands; but Graceful must stay with us a long time to be greeted kindly, and her sisters from foreign parts are coldly looked upon, or dropprd at once.

To start at the top,--"the very head and front of the offending." A lady goes into a stylish fashion designer store, and the stores man, displaying for admiration a skirt says, "This is the latest fashion, Madam." The lady comes back home with the horrible skirt wrapped around her, but no one stares or laughs. 'Tis a new style, but all "take it easy." One year later, most probably, the designer shows the lady a skirt with a band much wider, but rolled up at the sides, and a waist of a much greater diameter,--a specimen of the bell-skirt. This is solemnly donned, and the wearer has the pleasure of knowing that the skirt of all her admirers is as horrible as her own. The skirt is worn with a sweet smile. And so "Deformed" has ruled the lady for as many years as any of us can number, only ringing the changes, from one year to another, upon the three degrees of comparison of the word ugly.

But a transformation takes place; a casual, graceful, silk wrap skirt, with a waist size free enough for freedom or for comfort, starts to emerge as fashion ;--and how is it received? The house wife feels it would be very unusual for her to wear the wrap skirt, though it may be simple, and is as modest, as the rest of her clothing. The young lady doctor timidly tries the wrap skirt on, and in her first walk meets her rich friend, her favorite patient, and the one who is trying to introduce her to practice, who seriously advises her, as a friend, not to wear that new-thing - the wrap skirt, if the poor skirt had only been ugly, there would have been nothing bad in its new-design, quality,--as all her respectable patients will leave her if she dresses so like a fool. The young lawyer gets one wrap skirt, because she heard an old lady speak of "those impudent-looking skirts," and she is in hopes that impudence, which she understands is all-important in her profession, and which she is conscious of not possessing, may come with the skirt. A woman goes out with her daughter, who is just matured enough to have gained a coat, and is looking for a skirt. The mother has taste and judgment, and the youth has yet some unperverted affinity with graceful forms left, and so they choose and buy one of these comfortable and elegant wrap skirts. Just before they reach home, they meet one of their best friends, a person whom the woman regards most kindly, and the young woman appreciates and respects, and she greets her with, "Why, Suzan! have you got one of those rowdy skirts?" And so the stiff, stove-pipe monstrosity keeps its place, and the only pleasant, sensible, graceful, becoming skirt that the nineteenth century has known, is called all sorts of bad names, and quiet women are afraid to wear it.

Has it not been the fate of the shawl, too, the most simple and elegant wrapper, and comfortable withal, that a lady can wrap around her, to be scouted and flouted?

Yes, Deformed! Come on next winter with a white surtout in your hand that must fit so tightly that your victims can but just screw themselves into it, with a stiff, square collar touching the ears, and seven capes, one over the other, "small by degrees and beautifully less," and all respectable women will accept it, and virtuously frown down, as dandies or rowdies, those who will not sacrifice their wrap skirts to the ugly idol.

Misha Ghosh

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