into human forms and faces, there is no warrant for dressing men
in uniform, but a most emphatic protest against it. If God made
woman beautiful, He made her so to be looked at--to give pleasure
to the eyes which rest upon her--and she has no business to dress
herself as if she were a hitching-post, or to transform that which
should give delight to those among whom she moves, into a
ludicrous caricature of a woman's form.

I repeat that I have every reason to believe that God loves
Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. If God admires the
bodies He has made, He cannot admire them when they are covered by
the Shaker dress, for it spoils the looks of them, and differs
essentially from the plan which He pursues in draping all other
forms of life. There is no grace about it, and no beauty of color.
God admires clouds, I doubt not, when painted by the setting sun,
and stars flashing in the heavens, and the flowers of myriad hues
that are scattered over the earth, but if these are objects of His
special admiration, as they are of ours, what can He think of a
drab Shaker bonnet? What can He think when man and woman, the
glory and crown of His creation, are entirely overtopped and
thrown into the shade by birds and bees and blossoms, and go
poking around the world in unexampled and ingeniously contrived
ugliness? What does He think of men and women who take that
passion of love, which was intended to make them happy, and give
them sweet companionship, and bear young children to their arms,
and trample it under their feet as an unholy thing, and to welcome
to their hearts, in its stead, blackness, and darkness, and
tempest? What does He think of lives out of which are shut all
meaning and all individuality, and all love and expression of
beauty, and all vivifying, liberalizing, and humanizing