| | 1 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Add | | | Title: | The Regular Toast. Woman—God Bless Her [a machine-readable transcription]  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Description: | The toast includes
the sex, universally: it is to Woman,
comprehensively, wheresoever
she may be found. Let us con-
sider her ways. First, comes the
matter of dress. This is a most
important consideration, in a
subject of this nature, & must
be disposed of before we can
intelligently proceed to examine the profounder
depths of the theme. For text, let
us take the dress of two antipodal
types — the savage woman of
Central Africa, & the cultivated
daughter of our high modern
civilization. Among the
Fans, a great negro tribe, a woman,
when dressed for breakfast, or
home, or to go to market, or go out
a pick-up dinner, or to sit at home,
or to go out calling, or to a simple or to take a simple tea with
friends & neighbors, or to go out
calling, does not wear anything
at all but just her complexion.
That is all; that is her entire
outfit. It is the lightest cos-
tume in the world, but is made
of the darkest material. It has
often been mistaken for mourning.
It is the trimmest, & neatest, & grace-
fulest costume that is now in
fashion; it wears well, is fast
colors, doesn't show dirt; you
don't have to send it down town
to wash, & have some of it come
back scorched with the flat-iron, &
some of it with the buttons ironed
off, & some of it petrified with
starch, & some of it chewed by the
calf, & some of it rotted with
acids, & some of it exchanged
for other customers' things that
haven't any virtue but holiness,
& don't fit you anyhow,
& ten-twelfths of the pieces over-
charged for, & the rest of the dozen
stolen"mislaid." And it always fits; it is the
perfection of a fit. And it is the
handiest dress in the whole realm
of fashion. It is always ready, always "done up."
When you call on a Fan lady &
send up your card, the hired
girl never says, "Please take
a seat, madam is dressing —
she will be down in three-quarters
of an hour." No, madam is
always dressed, always ready
to receive; & before you can get
the door-mat before your eyes, she
is in your midst. And the hired
girl never has to say to a lady
visitor, "Please excuse madam,
she is undressing;" & even if
she ever had to bring such an
excuse at all, she wouldn't say
it in that way: she would say,
"Please excuse madam, she's skins,
not herself!" Then again, the
Fan ladies don't go to church to
see what each other has got on;
& they don't go back home & describe
it & slander it. The farthest they
ever go is to say some little biting
thing about the ultra fashionables | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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