Punch: Punch (33.1857)

128

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

fSeptember 26, 1857.

THE VERY THING.

Dealer. " I think I know exactly the Oss you want, Sir—About fifteen-two—good shoulder, light head and neck—

well ribbed up—tail well set on, good plat legs—plenty of bone—"

Gent, {delighted). " Ya'as—"

Dealer. " No shy about him. A good goer, high couraged, but temperate—to carry his own head, nice mouth, and

sweet temper—for about fiye-and-twenty fund ! "

Gent, {in exstacy). " The very thing."

Dealer. " Hah ! Then don't you wish you may get it ? " (Gent subsides.)

A DEFENCE OE LADIES' DRESSES.

There are two sides to the Crinoline question; hear both—what
may be said for, as well as what has been said against, ladies' present
ittrre. Equity to everybody ; but especially fairness to the fair.

The superfluity in length and circumference of dresses, so much
complained of, is good for trade : and against excess in the milliner's
bill a set-off is afforded by diminution in that of the laundress.
Stockings may now be worn for any length of time. Moreover, they
may be made of the very cheapest and coarsest material; there being,
as far as they are concerned, no longer any necessity for even so much
as common neatness.

It is very true that the length and expansion of the fashionable
dress give_ its wearer the form of a bell-mouthed glass tumbler with
a stem to it, turned upside down. No doubt, a lady might be a fish
from the waist downwards, and stand upon a caudal fin in that dress,
without looking at all the worse than she looks in it now. But this is
precisely its recommendation; that of serving to conceal those per-
tections of form, which, when they are allowed to be perceptible,
attract an amount of observation which must be unpleasant to the
object of it, and which can do the observer no good. Many men, now
living, are old enough to remember the time when the style of dress,
in consequence of being calculated to exhibit, and not to hide, per-
sonal advantages, affected young men with very frivolous and vain
impressions. Dresses were then worn so short as not quite to sweep
the street, and wherever you went, if there were well-dressed girls
there, you were continually catching a glimpse of a much too dainty
foot and ancle, twinkling with a far too elegant little sandaL This

trivial object continually attracted the attention of young men, who
ought to have been thinking of other things. Now, you never see
anything of the sort, and at the same time, a lady can hold her clothes
at any elevation she likes, when she simply shows a passing Swell how
to step out like a man, in boots the same as his own—except that they
are not so interesting to him.

Every husband and father ought to approve of the fashionable
dresses, for they preclude his wife from attracting unnecessary
attention, and if they tend slightly to hinder him from getting his
daughters off his hands, they have an exactly equal tendency to pre-
vent his sons from marrying for mere beauty, so that if they marry at
all, they will marry prudently, looking to the financial and not the
bodily figure, and thus become comforts instead of burdens to their
parents and friends. And sons who marry imprudently are infinitely
more expensive than unmarried daughters.

Lastly, these dresses are considered very pretty by the great
majority of the wearers, who think about dress, as they do about every
thing else, gregariously, and have no other idea of what is pretty than
what is fashionable. Shrouding their charms in excess of muslin, they
indulge a harmless vanity, and flatter themselves that they are creating
a great sensation, whereas they create none but what is excited in the
masculine mind by a bundle of clothes.

he d be so safe.
A nother reason for sending General Codrington to India.

The Sepoys beat and imprison people for speaking English."

The Mock Philanthropist.—He giveth crusts to babies.—Confucius