WOMEN'S CLOTHES 21 
of the wind. But if you explained to a man, who is 
your friend, the reason of the wind being an infernal 
nuisance to him, he would take it as an insult and 
perhaps never speak to you again. It would be a 
reflection on his manliness. 
Woman's dislike of the wind, we know, is caused 
by her dress, or, let us say, because she has not yet 
found out the way to clothe herself suitably for out- 
door work and exercise. Barbarians and savages 
know the way, but as our civilisation progressed and 
our women were more and more confined to the house, 
they clothed themselves for that condition mainly, 
and after several thousand years of study and experi- 
ment have succeeded in making their covering as 
beautiful as we want it to be. That is for so long as 
we think clothing necessary at all: the main fault 
with the clothing is that there is too much of it; but 
it is a fault which there is now happily a tendency 
to remedy. Undoubtedly there are Eastern costumes 
more beautiful; but to our Western eyes the beauty 
is of a kind which we do not desire to see adopted, 
since it is not in harmony with our Western feeling 
about womankind, and appears to us designed to 
give artificial or fictitious charm and allurement to 
the inane sex. 
This indoor dress which pleases becomes unsuitable 
and even absurd when worn out of doors in wind 
and rough and wet weather, a usual condition in this 
" brumous island." The headgear, designed to har- 
monise with the costume, makes it worse; what 
wonder then that if a hundred women be asked their 
