The News And Herald

Every man has noticed, and every man of taste has been disgusted with the flat curls, which many women wear upon their forehead, giving them as artificial and unattractive an appearance as anything of equal dimensions can. These curls are kept in place, it seems, by gumming the hair with bandoline, a preparation of quince-seeds. In consequence of its demand for this purpose the importation of quince-seeds has largely increased. The seeds used to be admitted free as seeds for medicinal use, but being now employed as an aid to the toilet, a duty of twenty per cent, ad valorem has been put upon them. It is not the province of the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate the national taste, but if he had made the seeds pay one-hundred per cent, or any amount of duty sufficient to prevent the manufacture of bandoline, and the making of those odious curls, he would have done a public benefit. But, neither he nor any other man, nor any public body, can hinder women who are so resolved, from disfiguring themselves. If they had not bandoline they would get something else, for they seem determined to wear the hideous curls. When we remember that the entire sex are absorbed with the question of how to make themselves look best. it is impossible to understand why they take such pains to produce the opposite effect. It is their ignorance, of course, which is at fault, and their ignorance seems to be unconquerable. Take them for all in all. American women have as much taste as any women in the world, and yet a great many blindly adopt anything labeled as fashion without thinking whether it be fit or unfit. Fashion will at any time drive them into any absurdity. It makes thousands, who might appear to advantage by consulting common sense, nature and their own needs, appear unattractive, and often renders them ridiculous. Fashion, indeed, as commonly represented, is more a deformer than a beautifier, and always will be, until women, refusing to accept its autocratic behests, study the principles of pure taste, which are, radically, always the same, and whose basis is the becoming.