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1Author:  Twain, Mark, 1835-1910Add
 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
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