**
--
* "The Clothes Question Considered in its Relation
to Beauty, Comfort and Health", by Mrs. M. S. G. Nichols.
Published in London, 32 Fopstone Road, Earl's Court, S.W.
** There have been a few cases of Chinese workmen who through carelessness
have exposed themselves by working in the sun; but such cases are rare.
--
Chinese dress changes with the seasons, varying from the thickest fur
to the lightest gauze. In winter we wear fur or garments lined with
cotton wadding; in spring we don a lighter fur or some other thinner garment;
in summer we use silk, gauze or grass cloth, according to the weather.
Our fashions are set by the weather; not by the arbitrary decrees
of dressmakers and tailors from Peking or elsewhere.
The number of deaths in America and in Europe every year,
resulting from following the fashion must, I fear, be considerable,
although of course no doctor would dare in his death certificate
to assign unsuitable clothing as the cause of the decease of a patient.
Even in the matter of dressing, and in this twentieth century,
"might is right". In the opinion of an impartial observer
the dress of man is queer, and that of woman, uncouth;
but as all nations in Europe and America are wearing the same kind of dress,
mighty Conventionality is extending its influence, so that even
some natives of the East have discarded their national dress
in favor of the uglier Western attire. If the newly adopted dress were,
if no better than, at least equal to, the old one in beauty and comfort,
it might be sanctioned for the sake of uniformity, as suggested
in the previous chapter; but when it is otherwise why should we imitate?
Why should the world assume a depressing monotony of costume?
Why should we allow nature's diversities to disappear?
Formerly a Chinese student when returning from Europe or America
at once resumed his national dress, for if he dared to continue
to favor the Western garb he was looked upon as a "half-foreign devil".
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