Our friends, the ladies, have invariably been a source of wonder, but in this abstruse era they seem to have shattered all previous records by a brazen attempt to lay bare the whole show and prompt us to apologize for our intrusion into polite society — with the spirit of the man who inadvertently opens the wrong bath-house door.
Times have changed, you say. Questionless they have, but we are old-fashioned enough to opine that the hoary old gentleman with the scythe cannot condone everything. We will always hold, for instance, that the modus operandi of the boudoir should remain there, in theory, at least and not be displayed in the corner drug store.
Oddly enough, instead of admitting these idiosyncrasies as such, they generally see fit to conjure up some saner alibi, to salve the conscience, we fancy. Didn't we inquire of a young lady last summer, when the trick of rolling the hose had grown into an obsession, the point of so ridiculous a fashion? And didn't she strike us cold with the rather pathetic rejoinder that ladies of discrimination are oblivious to fashion where comfort and common sense are concerned? Not being able to laugh that down, we chanced a guess that were
Similarly, on Fifth Avenue or the Rue de la Paix, to feature them held up from the sides by a three inch telephone cable swung around the neck, the ladies of discrimination would at once set out to bear the agony of lacerated flesh without the twitch of a plucked eyebrow. Similarly, the use of translucent, indeed, transparent materials for the garb of the day, and the shaving down of the evening gown to a degree whereat even the most hardened begin to whisper "daring," cannot help but excite our sensitive imaginations.
Is it, after all, a mere blind obedience to the mandates of the fashion-mongers, or have the whole army of their followers taken up the movement with the assurance that it is a new and subtle form of intrigue for flattery, matrimony, and whatnot? If the latter be the case, the ladies are plainly on the wrong trail for in the dear old yester-
year it was found not a propos to unveil the remoter charms, yet they received their flattery, matrimony, and whatnot, just the same. But today your little fellow toddles out on the front porch and reviews the pageant of femininity in all its frankness, as unperturbed as a commanding general.
This, of course, is only part of a complex problem, and we see the defenders of the modern passing it lightly off and calling us prudes. Well, we have never yet been known to apply sobriquets to the spade, nor do we countenance the drawing of the curtains of respectability before the central facts of life, but if prudes we be, we beg one parrying thought: We cannot stand by and see the beauty and romanticism of a perennial institution torn to tatters without one little wistful glance backward.
The sinner jogs along his path, comforted by the thought of the joy there will be in heaven when he repents.
ANTHONY GALT