effloresce also. The tall head-dresses which we call extravagant are the tapering tops of the turrets which rise from everywhere toward the sky. Everything is many colored, for the people of those days loved bright tints, and the whole gamut of the yellows, reds and greens is employed.

"How superb they were! Those belles of the Middle Ages with their long, clinging gowns, ornamented profusely with gold and silver. At this time, and for long after, there were edicts which restricted women in their dress. Philip the Fair issued very peremptory enactments forbidding ermine and miniver to common people, and prohibiting them from wearing golden girdles set with pearls and precious stones. One pair of gowns per year was, in this sovereign's opinion,. quite enough for a young woman of ordinary fortune, and two pairs sufficed for a woman of independent means."

The history of fashion is full of interest and romance. The farthingale, or wide skirt, supported by some mechanical contrivance, came in and has held its own for three hundred years. Pannier, hoop, crinoline, bustle, pouf, we have had it in its various phases, and have not seen the last of it yet.

We are at present very independent in one sense, and very far from free in another, as regards our dress. No law threatens us with penalties, let us wear what we will, and fashion equally wins its way with the queen and the humblest wage-earner. Each may wear what she chooses. Each must be ruled only by her sense of what is fit and appropriate, and by her purse.

We require a ceremonious and formal dress, an elegant dress, ornate and sumptuous for great occasions, for the wedding and the stately dinner, and the evening party and reception. For every day and business wear a short, simple serge answers every purpose. For the kitchen nothing surpasses calico and gingham. A dress has no beauty unless it is suited to the occasion and to the

wearer.

As a general rule, a lady should not try to produce too youthful an effect in her clothing. Her face should be younger than her bonnet. Excessive gayety in feathers and flowers, a straining after the lost bloom and an overloading of finery, accentuates wrinkles and calls attention to the fact that old age has arrived. A grandmother must not array herself like a young lady in her teens.

Long and trailing skirts, while very beautiful in the house, are suitable only for the drawing room and have no place or propriety in the street, the office, or the shop. They are inconvenient when they must be carried in one hand lest they touch a pavement, and they are a menace to health if suffered to come in contact with sidewalks and roadways, where all sorts of germs abound.

The sensible and judicious woman wears a short walking dress, devoid of needless trimming, on her excursions abroad and on the rainy day. To church also she goes very plainly and very simply attired.

If women who wish to be well dressed would spend less time and thought on their gowns and wraps, and more on their bonnets, gloves and shoes, the effect

they desire to obtain would more easily satisfy them. The gown is of course important, but the richer it is the more necessary is it that every detail

of its trimming and finishing-every little thing about the costume-should match it. The whole effect of a beautiful afternoon toilette can be marred by a soiled or tawdry-looking pair of gloves, by shoes which do not suit the dress, or by a hat which is apparently meant for somebody else than the wearer. The best dressed women in the world, from an artistic point of view, are those who have adopted a certain style―a uniform which they wear all the time, as, for instance, the Friends, with their beautiful shades of dove color and gray, or certain orders of charitable sisterhoods, whose dress is appointed for them.

One sometimes wonders why women of middle age so often blunder in the choice of their gowns. For instance, a lady approaching fifty, rather short and stout, with hair turning gray, who would look well in a solid color or in black, has nothing better to do than to buy for herself a checked dress or a staring plaid, or, worse still, a limp wool material of some kind with gay and garish flowers stamped all over it. I remember the pride with which a friend of mine showed me one day a purple gown she had just bought, on which were green and yellow flowers. The material would have been pretty for some upholstered chair or for a portiere in a room which needed lighting up because it had not enough sun, but made up for its wearer it was simply shocking, and set her at once out of harmony with everything in the room in which she sat, and with everything in any room. The same lady simply dressed in a black gown would have looked refined and elegant. This is why it is sometimes an immense improvement to a woman to adopt a mourning dress, the severe outlines and solid hues of which are not so trying to her as the glaring contrasts into which her lack of taste suffers her to fall.

Speaking of gloves, those which wear best are of a dark shade of brown or a pronounced shade of tan; pale yellow, ecrus and the white gloves stitched with black which have been popular recently, soil with provoking celerity; and a soiled glove does not look ladylike.

As for shoes, for outdoor wear in cold weather they should be thick, with broad, comfortable soles, and the shoe should be a little longer than the foot. For indoor wear any light, thin shoe may be worn, but it should not be used out of doors.

Bonnets are, upon the whole, the most trying accessories of a woman's costume. Sometimes they are immense, like coal scuttles or three-decker ships, and then again they are little tiny affairs which rest on the head like a flake of snow. Women have been known to go serenely down the street unaware that their hats have blown off in the days when these were very small. Our present fashion, however, of fastening on our hats with long pins makes this catastrophe less dangerous than once. In choosing a bonnet one must not be guided by the milliner's taste alone. The shape of the head should determine the kind of bonnet

worn, and some concessions should be made to the age, complexion and general style of dress of the wearer.

It may be remarked in passing that men frequently blame women for extravagance when they see women beautifully dressed, the fact being that very well dressed women often spend only small sums on their wardrobes. For instance, a lady the other evening appeared at a dinner in a gown so beautiful that her friends who were intimate complimented her about it afterward. They supposed it to be a creation of the present season, whereas she explained that it was really ten years old, and had gone through several changes from one year to another, having just come out from the latest transformation with its white lace and new ribbon, so bright and pretty that it really looked as if bought yesterday.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Anniversaries in the Home.

O we always make as much as we might of home anniversaries? Every birthday should be a home festival. When the wedding day comes round, it should be kept as a gala day in the home life. If there is some signal event in the family life which you wish to remember, always keep the day of its recurrence with a special gift or greeting. There are homes in which the humdrum routine of life is seldom broken, and where birthdays come and birthdays go, and nobody is the wiser. In other homes, the cake, with its birthday candles, the gifts upon the child's plate at breakfast, the flowers, the little extra feast, the company invited in, and the general air of a holiday about the house, signalize the time as something very sweet and pleasant, a time of gladness and gratitude.

It goes without saying that in all Christian homes Easter and Christmas are kept with appropriate and joyous feeling, and that the children are made especially happy when these great days come round. Christmas is, of course, more than any other day in the year, the children's day of supreme felicity, but from eight to eighty we may all be children when we celebrate the world's greatest birthday -that of Christ, our Lord. His resurrection day is equally a time of joy and gladness. Among our American anniversaries the Fourth of July naturally holds high place, and patriotism can be kindled and encouraged by our celebration of our national independence day. Then we have Memorial Day, when we lay flowers on the graves of our dead heroes; and Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday, which we celebrate in memory of two of our greatest men— two of the greatest men the world has ever seen.

We need not fear the multiplication of holidays. Life is more or less a grind for most of us, and whenever there comes a blessed little break in the routine, we may be thankful for it, and avail ourselves of it with all our hearts. Thanksgiving Day is peculiarly a national fête day for Americans. Begun by the Pilgrim Fathers, when they had wrested the first scanty harvest from the reluctant fields of New England, it was an acknowledgment of the kind and fostering care that had led them over the sea and brought them safe to shores where their freedom to worship God could be unchallenged. It has more and more become a home day,