Then comes The Woman of the snoopopathic story. She is
always "beautifully groomed" (who these grooms are that
do it, and where they can be hired, I don't know), and
she is said to be "exquisitely gowned."

It is peculiar about The Woman that she never seems to
wear a _dress_--always a "gown." Why this is, I cannot
tell. In the good old stories that I used to read, when
I could still read for the pleasure of it, the heroines
--that was what they used to be called--always wore
dresses. But now there is no heroine, only a woman in a
gown. I wear a gown myself--at night. It is made of
flannel and reaches to my feet, and when I take my candle
and go out to the balcony where I sleep, the effect of
it on the whole is not bad. But as to its "revealing
every line of my figure"--as The Woman's gown is always
said to--and as to its "suggesting even more than it
reveals"--well, it simply does _not_. So when I talk of
"gowns" I speak of something that I know all about.

Yet, whatever The Woman does, her "gown" is said to
"cling" to her. Whether in the street or in a _cabaret_
or in the drawing-room, it "clings." If by any happy
chance she throws a lace wrap about her, then it clings;
and if she lifts her gown--as she is apt to--it shows,
not what I should have expected, but a _jupon_, and even
that clings. What a _jupon_ is I don't know. With my
gown, I never wear one. These people I have described,
The Man and The Woman--The Snoopopaths--are, of course,