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There was a noisy whir of sewing-machines in Madame Levaney's large dressmaking establishment. Cicely Leeds's head ached as she bent over the ruffles she was hemming. She was the youngest seamstress in the room, and wore her hair hanging in two long braids. It seemed a pity that such girlish shoulders should be learning to stoop, and that her eyes had to bear such a constant strain.
I had tucked in my superb ruffles of English point lace, but my frilled shirt front of the same material protruded slightly through my vest, which I had not buttoned carefully. She saw it, and said, "Come here a moment." "What does madam require?" "Let me see it. What beautiful lace!" "So I have been told, madam, but it is very old.
The haughty Austrian noble prided himself in dressing as he pleased, and looked with contempt upon the studied attitudes and foppish attire of the French. The Parisian courtier, on the other hand, rejoicing in his ruffles, and ribbons, and practiced movements, despised the boorish manners, as he deemed them, of the Austrian.
She wore a pretty dress of maroon cashmere and velvet, with delicate ruffles of rich old yellow lace. Her dainty little French shoes and fine gold ornaments were immensely admired by the two young girls beside her, who were not yet "out," and were accustomed to be clothed in the simplest attire.
Their clothes were their riches; and I argue from analogy, that the fondness for dress, so extravagant in females, arises from the same cause want of cultivation of mind. When men meet they converse about business, politics, or literature; but, says Swift, "how naturally do women apply their hands to each others lappets and ruffles."
You observe things very much out of place frills and ruffles and ill-darned stockings fine bonnets and clouted shoes silk gowns and dirty petticoats; while the husband goes about ragged and torn, with scarcely a clean thing about him. Industry is of course essential. This is the soul of business; but, without method, industry will be less productive. Industry may sometimes look like confusion.
Heavy fringes, bows, puffs, ruffles, and revers finished off the dress, making one's head ache to think of the amount of work wasted, for not a single graceful line struck the eye, and the beauty of the material was quite lost in the profusion of ornament.
Then he asked permission to go back and rejoin the scout which he commanded; which permission I gave, though it was not necessary; and away he went, running like a young deer that has lagged from the herd a tall, fine, wholesome young fellow, and as sturdy and active as any I ever saw in rifle-dress and ruffles.
Indeed, she complained that in his astronomical ardour he sometimes omitted to take off, before going into his workshop, the beautiful lace ruffles which he wore while conducting a concert, and that consequently they became soiled with the pitch employed in the polishing of his mirrors.
But his experiences proved that these minor reforms were at the best only palliatives, "sending men ruffles who wanted shirts," and that there could be only one really satisfactory solution to restore to the people the land that had been theirs in bygone time, to root out the bullocks and the sheep and to root in the people into their ancient inheritance.
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