VII. THE DUTY OF BEING UNFASHIONABLE. L ET us consider the duty of being unfashionable. I do not believe that it is always a duty to be unfashionable. Fashions may be right, as well as wrong; good, as well as bad; and when they are right and good it is a duty to be fashionable. Or a fashion may be neither good nor bad, and then it is neither a duty to be fashionable nor to be unfashionable. The early Friends, and other religious sects, opposed fashion as such; they protested against all fashion, in dress and address, fashions. of speech, fashions of costume, fashions of conduct; the fashion of taking off your hat, of using the plural pronoun, of having a coat made to fit the body. But I see nothing objectionable in wearing a fashionable dress rather than an unfashionable one, if you wish to do so, and can afford it. As a general thing it is best to conform to the customs of society when they are innocent. It is not worth while to make one's self a martyr for trifles; and it sometimes requires more courage and involves more suffering to wear an odd-looking dress than to confess the greatest heresy in religion or politics. There is nothing which excites the public indignation more than a peculiar costume. When I first went to Europe, on arriving in England I found it quite common for men to wear shawls; so I bought a shawl, and wore it. But when I reached Switzerland it appeared to be a thing unknown, and as I walked through the streets of a Swiss village all the boys would run after me and all the girls laugh at me; so I had to lay aside my shawl. If a man in Boston should wear a turban, it would almost create a riot; but if he should wear a hat in some places in the East, he might be stoned by the rabble, for the common people are always intolerant of any singularity in dress. Therefore I think it wrong in parents to compel young people to wear dresses made in an unusual way, for they thus expose their children to needless and useless suffering. The poor little boys or girls are made objects of ridicule to their companions, and perhaps no pain experienced in after life is sharper than what children sometimes endure in this way. What a dreadful time the poor little Quaker children must have had when their fathers and mothers first sent them out into the street in their strange costume! Even now they suffer not a little. I recollect hearing of a young Quaker girl, who had it borne in upon her mind that she ought to be married in a strict Quaker dress, though her friends generally had dropped that ancient costume. She had a struggle to tell her lover of her wishes, |