434 
Annual Report of the 
DRESS. 
BY JOHN BASCOM, LL.D. 
President of the University of Wisconsin. 
Ladies and Gentlemen: I naturally feel a certain diffidence, a 
fear of offence, in scattering criticisms as freely as I must among 
my audience in speaking on the subject of dress. My apology is, I 
strike an honest stroke straight before me, and can do no otherwise 
than mean the person I hit. But I beg leave to remind you that 
I am but one among a hundred; } T ou can, at any moment, fall 
hack on your reserved right to tear in pieces and spurn what I 
have written, as something set down either in ignorance or inso¬ 
lence or both. Let us trust, however, that the truth will suf¬ 
fer no damage between us; but that while, like an angel of strength 
it may bestow some lusty whacks on all shoulders, it will slowly drive 
us one and all into obedience; knight us one and all in its order 
of honor. That which most occupies our thoughts, we sometimes 
carefully keep hack from our lips, suppressing in speech, as unim¬ 
portant, things which the free and secret forces of the mind have 
pronounced of greatest moment b}* dwelling on them with habitual 
solicitude. The formal declaration is held aloof from the hidden 
opinions only that these may be cherished with less contradiction 
and disturbance, and that we need not blush at feelings which for 
us have no other wrong than that of publicity. We frequently 
deal thus with our affections, and hide them out of sight by an 
assumed indifference most untrue to them. So, also, we reserve 
from discussion the subject of dress, speaking of it as a trivial theme, 
scarcely to be inquired into with severity, or pursued with sober 
purpose; yet belie our neglect by thinking more of it, and doing 
more in reference to it, than in behalf of any one of all the grave, 
w'ise subjects we habitually return to in discussion. We eschew 
thought on this topic, not because we have practically declared it 
an unimportant one, but because, having wrapped about it all the 
petty affections and vanities of the soul, we feel instantly uncom- 
