436 
Annual Be port of the 
ness corals, diamonds, cashmere shawls, India shawls, tapestry 
needle-work, lace; hold these last fabrics to the light and the skele¬ 
ton hand of death will be seen to have wrought in them, tracing in 
their web and woof as a water-mark the curses of outraged humanity. 
A ship of war, a great merchant-man making ready for a cruise 
around the globe, would hardly in their outfit make such claims 
on the market, worry so many importers, perplex so many clerks, 
get together such diverse, far-fetched and wonderful things as 
one little argosy of fashion, destined to a watering-place on a xheas- 
ure trip of a dozen days. The mammoth trunks of our stations 
fairly indicate what the industrial world is at, to what burdens the 
shoulders of porters are bending in the march of life, whose im¬ 
pedimenta they are that fill the baggage-wagons of the race, cut- 
> 
ting it off from a quick, effective, victorious march in social and in¬ 
dustrial progress. Any margin of time and labor that the world 
gets to itself in industry is devoted to this endless and hopeless con¬ 
sumption involved in the merest accidents of living, in clothing 
one’s self, so that he can walk among his fellows and begin to look 
out on the world before and above him. 
But the effect of dress on character is more even than that indi¬ 
cated by this demand on time and labor ii its preparation. Some 
tasks, as those of the mechanic’s, come as the regular allotments of 
the day, and have but a slight hold on the thoughts, save in their 
actual performunce. But the labor involved in dress, on the part 
of those most given to it, is not so much a stated duty, as a perpet¬ 
ual, personal, and teasing anxiety; something crowding into all 
leisure hours, pre-occupying the mind, and perpetually tasking the 
powers for critical observation, ingenious device, and patient execu¬ 
tion. Hence, the plans, vexations, and victories of dress are taken 
into the inmost meditative life, and are liable, at any moment, and 
in any place, to crowd in a hope or a fear; to flush the face with a 
sense of success or of failure, to give rise to a new undertaking, and 
to call in the thoughts afresh for the petty achievements of man- 
tua-making. Moreover, dress is the visible, habitual, language of 
the foolish vanities, the trivial emulations and secondary distinc¬ 
tions of society. It must be studied by each one who enters polite 
circles, a competitor for position and power, as a series of signals, 
showing where the dangers lie, how they are to be met, and on 
what hinges the hopes of success are turning. Dress is a species of 
