Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 451 
ballot, would this one change avail, by which the inner and outer 
life of woman, life at home and abroad, should become her own in 
its time, its thoughts, its untrammeled powers; more than any of 
these, since through them all, through that mental independence 
and renovation which they are to secure, can it alone be reached. Su¬ 
perficial as we deem dress, the forces which control it lie deeper, 
are reached with more difficulty than those involved in any of these 
intermediate changes. 
Dress is to social influence what language is to national inter¬ 
course. It yields only to those deep-seated tendencies that control 
the feelings from which it springs. The connection of dress and 
education is most immediate. Education, co-education, is to give 
that enlarged intelligence, that increased self-respect, which are to 
furnish forth character with new power and beauty, and enable it 
easily to bow to itself the accidents of life expressed in dress. A 
simple dress, on the other hand, is to emancipate physical forces, 
now so wastefully consumed by it, and give the needed health and 
strength for higher pursuits. 
It may well be doubted, whether a judicious college course is as 
taxing, day by day, to physical resources, as is woman’s dress with 
its persistent restrictions and unending worry. 
If, then, the dominion of fashion is so firm, if it yields neither to 
reason nor ridicule, scarcely cares to notice either the philosopher 
or the satirist, wdiy strike one’s head against it? 
Those limited coteries, in which some outre costume has found 
acceptance, have not always answered this question wisely. Cos¬ 
tumes, though reaching in a fair degree the physical ends of dress, 
have met with no acceptance, and have even deepened, by making 
open and bitter, the prejudices which they encounter. The sensi¬ 
tive, irritable mood of society on this subject has not been sufficient¬ 
ly regarded; nothing has been done to break the transition; no 
time has been given for a change of feelings. Nor have the new gar¬ 
ments, strange and ultra to the eye, been sufficiently softened by 
the secondary devices of taste, and the associations of character. 
There has not been time for the formation of counter feelings, and 
occasionally the bold, harsh nature which has made these changes 
possible to the parties that have entered on them, has added to the 
offense. Dress rests for justification on the feelings, and can not at 
once, therefore, be altered by a syllogism. A logical victory over 
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