adopted while there the American attire, but as soon as she returned to China
she resumed her own native dress. Let us hear what she has to say
on this subject. Speaking of Western civilization she said:
"If we keep our own mode of life it is not for the sake of blind conservatism.
We are more logical in our ways than the average European imagines.
I wear for instance this `ao' dress as you see, cut in one piece
and allowing the limbs free play -- because it is manifestly
a more rational and comfortable attire than your fashionable skirt from Paris.
On the other hand we are ready to assimilate such notions from the West
as will really prove beneficial to us." Beauty is a matter of education:
when you have become accustomed to anything, however quaint or queer,
you will not think it so after a while. When I first went abroad
and saw young girls going about in the streets with their hair falling loose
over their shoulders, I was a little shocked. I thought how careless
their parents must be to allow their girls to go out in that untidy state.
Later, finding that it was the fashion, I changed my mind,
until by degrees I came to think that it looked quite nice;
thus do conventionality and custom change one's opinions.
But it should be remembered that no custom or conventionality
which sanctions the distorting of nature, or which interferes with
the free exercise of any member of the body, can ever be called beautiful.
It has always been a great wonder to me that American and European ladies
who are by no means slow to help forward any movement for reform,
have taken no active steps to improve the uncouth and injurious style
of their own clothes. How can they expect to be granted the privileges of men
until they show their superiority by freeing themselves from
the enthrallment of the conventionalities of fashion?

Men's dress is by no means superior to the women's. It is so tight
that it causes the wearer to suffer from the heat much more than is necessary,