By the light of this record of successful
action among the Vigilantes of Montana, we
may interpret much of the rude justice that
seems sometimes to discredit pioneers of the
Far West. As to essentials of character, men
of the same race are everywhere pretty much
alike, however they may differ in outward
conditions and the accidents determining their
manner of development. Even where the best
are at their roughest, and the worst are tempted
to flock in upon them, men and women are still
found to be good fellows in the main. And
so, wherever the predatory class is strong
enough to maintain valid war against the honest
part of the community, the best hope for society
lies in a stern acceptance of their challenge.
They must be made to feel that the true man
is stouter than the knave, and that the true
man has his own strong arm for a defence
whenever he is left without aid from the strong
arm of the law.

          FOOLISH FASHIONS

Fashion is a tyrant; always has been, and
apparently has no intention of ever being
anything else; a cruel and oppressive tyrant,
delighting in nothing so much as in bodily torture
and general inconvenience.

Begin at the ninth century, and the cottes
hardies of the then fashionable ladies—those
tight-fitting, scooped-out, sleeveless overcoats
by which the women sought to give themselves
the appearance of possessing jimp and trim
waists, whether natural or no. A century
later, and we find an unmistakable corset,
with bones and lace complete, decking the
figure of the Fiend of Fashion in a
manuscript of the time of Edward the Confessor.
This fiend wears not only a pair of stays, but
sleeves and skirts of such inordinate length
that they are knotted up, as was then the
custom, to keep them out of the wearer's way.
Presently came the surcoats, which trailed
about a yard on the ground, and which at last
trailed so many yards on the ground, that
Charles the Fifth of France threatened
excommunication against all and sundry who dared to
wear a dress which terminated "like the tail of
a serpent."

Contemporaneous with the knotted sleeves
and the trailing surcoat, which was more like
our modern court-train than anything else,
were the snake-toed shoes, and those high,
pointed sugar-loaf head-dresses, running so far
back that one wonders how they ever kept on
the head at all; as well as those square and
wondrously constructed fabrics, spreading out
wider towards the top and surmounted with
crowns of jewel work or of flowers, which
seemed as if they must overbalance the wearer.
The Dauphin put an end to these special
monstrosities, and curtailed both sleeves and
skirts, while he cut off the snake toes from the
feet and cut down the towering fabric from
the head. The women (as is their custom, God
bless them!) resisted these innovations in favour
of common sense and convenience; and resisted
successfully; until one Poulaine, a shoemaker,
devised an attractive shoe with a high heel,
which, being both perilous and unnatural,
immediately "took."

Catherine de Medici admired wasps' waists.
To create both the reality and the semblance,
she invented full-puffed sleeves, a huge triple
ruff round the neck, full and bustled skirts,
a long tight stomacher, with a frill round the
bottom of it; so that by contrast with frills
and bustles here, there, and everywhere, added
to the actuality of the tightly laced long-pointed
stomacher body, the waist took unto itself the
form and relative dimensions of a wasp's middle.
The real corset underneath the stomacher was a
stiff machine strengthened by a corset-cover of
light steel bars, which gave just thirteen inches
and no more, to the waist, and which must truly
(as one writer said), have made the wearer look
as if she were imprisoned in a fortress. Our own
gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, copied her
royal sister of France in this sage and
satisfactory fashion; but the English corset-cover
of perforated steel was larger, heavier, clumsier,
than the French; it was as severe for torture,
but, less efficient for what the taste of the day
called elegance: which is just what we might
have expected. The men of the period, too, and
the men of other periods also, affected stays and
tight lacing and the stomacher-shaped vest to
match, and puffed-out sleeves, padded breeches,
with wasp's markings about the body, to make
the size of the waist look as small in proportion
as their wives'. A glance at the portraits of
the great men and courtiers of the time, will
show the presence of the stiff unyielding corset
under their richly embroidered vests, and the
strange passion they had for making themselves
in front as much as possible like the figure
which we now idolize as Punch.

It was in the reign of Elizabeth that lawn and
cambric frills first came into the country as an
improvement on the less luxurious holland.
When the queen had her first lawn ruffs, there
was no one to starch them, so she had to get
some Dutch women over, who understood the
mystery. It is said that her first starcher was
the wife of the coachman Guillan; afterwards,
Mistress Dingham Vauden Plasse, the wife of
a Flemish knight, established herself in London
as a professed starcher. She gave lessons in her
profession, and many ladies sent their daughters
and kinswomen to learn of her. Her terms were
five pounds for teaching the art generally, and
twenty shillings additional for teaching how to
"seeth" the starch. It was yellowed with
saffron; which fashion obtained for a long
while. We all remember reading how
Mistress Turner, the murderess of Sir Thomas
Overbury, gave this saffron-coloured starch its
death blow, by wearing her elaborately got-up
frills and ruffs of the nicest shade of yellow on
the day of her execution; just as Mrs. Manning
in the same way put an end to black satin for
half a generation at least. Philip Stubs, an
honest citizen, who wrote in 1585 on the sins
and follies of his time, wrote thus of ruffs and