A Fashion Item.
[ILLUSTRATION]
[Description: 503EAF. Page 153. In-line image opening image for the story "A Fashion Item." The image
stretches vertically down the left side of the page and depicts Twain
in the background examining the outfit of a well-dressed woman. The
woman is wearing a ruffled satin dress with a long train.]
AT General G—'s reception the other
night, the most fashionably dressed lady
was Mrs. G. C. She wore a pink satin
dress, plain in front but with a good deal of rake to
it—to the train, I mean; it was said to be two
or three yards long. One could see it creeping
along the floor some little time after the woman
was gone. Mrs. C. wore also a white bodice, cut
bias, with Pompadour sleeves, flounced with
ruches; low neck, with the inside handkerchief
not visible, with white kid gloves. She had on
a pearl necklace, which glinted lonely, high up
the midst of that barren waste of neck and
shoulders. Her hair was frizzled into a tangled
chapparel, forward of her ears, aft it was drawn
together, and compactly bound and plaited into
a stump like a pony's tail, and furthermore was
canted upward at a sharp angle, and ingeniously
supported by a red velvet crupper, whose forward
extremity was made fast with a half-hitch around
a hairpin on the top of her head. Her whole
top hamper was neat and becoming. She had a
beautiful complexion when she first came, but it
faded out by degrees in an unaccountable way.
However, it is not lost for good. I found the
most of it on my shoulder afterwards. (I stood
near the door when she squeezed out with the
throng.) There were other ladies present, but I only took notes of one as a specimen.
I would gladly enlarge upon the subject were I able to do it justice.
