word--_dress_. Ever since that far-away season when Eve, the beautiful,
inquiring, let-me-see-for-myself Eve, made fig leaves popular in Eden,
and invented the apron to fill a newly felt want, dress has been at once
the comfort and the torment of woman.

Acting is a matter of pretence, and she who can best pretend a splendid
passion, a tender love, or a murderous hate, is admittedly the finest
actress. Time was when stage wardrobe was a pretence, too. An actress
was expected to please the eye, she was expected to be historically
correct as to the shape and style of her costume; but no one expected
her queenly robes to be of silk velvet, her imperial ermine to be
anything rarer than rabbit-skin. My own earliest ermine was humbler
still, being constructed of the very democratic white canton flannel
turned wrong side out, while the ermine's characteristic little black
tails were formed by short bits of round shoe-lacing. The only advantage
I can honestly claim for this domestic ermine is its freedom from the
moths, who dearly love imported garments of soft fine cloth and rare
lining. I have had and have seen others have, in the old days, really
gorgeous brocades made by cutting out great bunches of flowers from
chintz and applying them to a cheaper background, and then picking out
the high lights with embroidery silk, the effect being not only
beautiful, but rich. All these make-believes were necessary then, on a
$30 or $35 a week salary, for a leading lady drew no more.

[Illustration: _Clara Morris as "Jane Eyre"_]

But times are changed, stage lighting is better, stronger. The opera
glass is almost universally used, deceptions would be more easily
discovered; and more, oh, so much more is expected from the actress of
to-day. Formerly she was required, first of all, to sink her own