Alexandria Gazette

FATILITY OF FASHIONS.—It is a startling fact that human life is shorter in New England now than it was fifty years ago. There are diseases now which were hardly known then, and which bring thousands to a premature grave. What is the cause of all this? Has our climate essentially changed? No—unless it be for the better. The cause is to be found doubtless in the corrupting fashions of the times, which regulate the food and the dress of people, and which make idleness more respectable than honest sturdy industry. We deprecate these fashions; they are rapidly leading us as a people to those excesses which have proved the ruin of other and earlier nations. It is time this subject were looked into with as much solicitude and care as politicians look for the causes of civil liberty and the public good.

In olden times—in the days of the revolution, when sons worked willingly in the forests and the fields and partook of the simple but substantial fare of their own farms; when daughters wore thick shoes, loose gowns, and labored at the spinning wheel and loom, such diseases as consumption and dyspepsia were seldom or never known. Doctors were rare acquaintances then. But now, if a young man would appear respectable, he must carry a green bag to court rather than a bag to mill; he must wield a yard stick, rather than a hoe or shovel; and as for young ladies—alas!— Their shoes must be of kid thin as wafers: their chests must be pent up in corsets as closely as a Chinese foot, and their time must be spent in spinning street yarn, thumbing the piano forte or discoursing sentimental songs. All these fashions are prejudicial to human life and health. Oh, that fashion would ever take the right direction, and go upon the maxim of sanctioning nothing which interferes with the laws of health. Then would the hopes of our country brighten, and individuals would enjoy an amount of comfort which is now too willingly but blindly sacrificed in false taste.

Maine Cultivator.