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In fact, these occasions are rather avoided, recalling, as they do, the vapid and tedious entertainments of the competitive epoch, the receptions and balls and dinners of a semi-barbaric people striving for social prominence by shutting a certain number in and a certain number out, and overdressing, overfeeding, and overdrinking.
Not that the articles which were worn on the heads were always bad; some of them came from irreproachable workshops; but there was everywhere the bad taste of overdressing, and nowhere the tact of appropriation. The hats were all on the wrong heads. Everybody was a testimony of what money can do without art.
On the whole, however, the interest in dress and appearance will grow, because as the adolescent boy or girl becomes conscious of his own personality he thinks more and more of the appearance of his person, and especially of how it appears to others. There is even the danger that the boy will become a fop or a dandy, and that the girl will take to overdressing.
Here, of course, trip up and down on the light fantastic toe, and in the prettiest costumes of the day, all the daughters of the earth, with their attendant cavaliers. There are certain aspects of a foreign watering-place with which we have nothing to do here, such as the gambling and the overdressing of a certain class, but all is externally most respectable.
She wore yellow and purple because she thought it better, as she said, while one was about it, to look like the Queen of Sheba than like a revendeuse; she put pearls in her hair and crimson and gold in her tea-gown for the same reason: it was her theory that nature itself had overdressed her and that her only course was to drown, as it was hopeless to try to chasten, the overdressing.
Farnshaw, broken with the cold, the privations of the long winter, and the growing disappointments of her domestic life, saw nothing but overdressing and foolishness in her daughter's new attention to the details of personal appearance.
" last word in smartness. Overdressing is just ten degrees worse than underdressing." "Oh, I don't know. Take this sloppy old blue suit of mine " "It's perfectly nice and simple, and quite well cut. You probably had a clever tailor." "I had. He lives in Chicago or New York, I believe." "Really? How did he come to Schoenstrom?" "Never been there. This tailor is a busy boy.
Formerly in England, as still in every other country but England, a marked difference was made in the style of dress in the country and in town. Formerly, overdressing in the country was reprobated as quite vulgar; but now, even persons of birth and fashion are guilty of this want of taste and sense. They display almost as much expensive dress in the country as in town.
These things we should not have mentioned, except to say that the massive silver did prove a hoard available, in after times, against a rainy day. In fine, Wilhelmina's Wedding was magnificent; though one had rubs too; and Mamma was rather severe. "Hair went all wrong, by dint of overdressing; and hung on one's face like a boy's. Courage, my Princess!
New York women have been forced into a life of overdressing, dancing, visiting, shopping, gaining the accomplishments, and showing them off, and leading the life of society at its height; the men have been overwhelmingly engaged in commerce, and later in Wall Street. No wonder that four o'clock was an hour at which both paused, and called for a "cup of tea."
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