food.

Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough, that his
daughters should cost him as little as possible; and wishes,
naturally enough also, that they should be as well dressed as
possible, deny that it would be a good thing for them to be
practical milliners and mantua-makers; and, by making their own
clothes gracefully and well, exercise thrift in clothing.

But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone, I believe, in
wishing for some thrift in the energy which produces it. Labour
misapplied, you will agree, is labour wasted; and as dress, I
presume, is intended to adorn the person of the wearer, the making
a dress which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain
case of waste. It would be impertinent in me to go into any
details: but it is impossible to walk about the streets now
without passing young people who must be under a deep delusion as
to the success of their own toilette. Instead of graceful and
noble simplicity of form, instead of combinations of colour at
once rich and delicate, because in accordance with the chromatic
laws of nature, one meets with phenomena more and more painful to
the eye, and startling to common sense, till one would be hardly
more astonished, and certainly hardly more shocked, if in a year
or two, one should pass someone going about like a Chinese lady,
with pinched feet, or like a savage of the Amazons, with a wooden
bung through her lower lip. It is easy to complain of these
monstrosities: but impossible to cure them, it seems to me,
without an education of the taste, an education in those laws of
nature which produce beauty in form and beauty in colour. For
that the cause of these failures lies in want of education is