The Olneyville Times

ARE WE CIVILIZED!

One Who Analyzes Fashions Says We Are Still Half Savage,

The prevailing motive not to appear singular accounts for the continuance of certain fashions, many being the results of superstition, religious observances and the desire to be "up to date." We are acquainted with what facility hair may be fashioned into various fantastic shapes for personal adornment, and when a part through the middle is decreed it is worn without regard to contour, and whether it may add to or detract from one's intellectual appearance no thought is given. If fashion says crimp, we crimp; if curl and wave, we obey. And the custom of keeping the head closely shaved prevails, as among the Fijian women, while the men cultivate long hair, thus reversing the conditions met with among highly civilized nations.

The lips, ears and nose offer a variety of possible alterations and are a means of ornamental display, and, says Captain Cook, over a hundred years ago, in describing the naked savages on the east coast of Australia, their principal form of ornamentation was a bone, which they thrust through the cartilage which divides the nostrils from each other. The lip ornamentations by the Botocudo Indians and the Tlinket Bella are disgusting in the extreme, and in the heart of Africa among the Bongo women a clamp or clasp is worn at the corners of the mouth, as if they wanted to contract the orifice and literally put a curb on its possibilities

The teeth cannot escape, and the Malays view in disgust the natural tint and stain theirs a jet black. One views in horror the Chinese method of foot binding, but which is much mitigated when considering by degrees the fashionable toe used in the last century.

Thus we can see that fashion's fetters torture and harass equally civilized men and savage vanity. Are we not the same in kind, but differing only in degree from the savage? New York Advertiser.