Out here the women see by the Sunday
papers that it's being wore that way publicly in New York and no one
arrested for it, but they don't hardly believe it at that, and they
wouldn't show themselves in one, not if you begged them to on your
bended knees, and what is society coming to anyway? You might as well
dress like one of them barefooted dancers, only calling 'em barefooted
must be meant like sarcasm--and they'd die before they'd let a daughter
of theirs make a show of herself like that for odious beasts of men to
leer at, and so on--until a couple years later Mrs. Henrietta Templeton
Price gets a regular one and wears it down Main Street, and nothing
objectionable happens; so then they all hustle to get one--not quite so
extreme, of course, but after all, why not, since only the evil-minded
could criticise? Pretty soon they're all wearing it exactly like New
York did two years ago, with mebbe the limit raised a bit here and there
by some one who makes her own. But again they're saying that the latest
one New York is wearing is so bad that it must be confined to a certain
class of women, even if they do get taken from left to right at Asbury
Park and Newport and other colonies of wealth and fashion, because the
vilest dregs can go there if they have the price, which they often do.
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