There is something rather pathetic to me about a man being so ignorant of why a woman’s dress is beautiful, but only the effect remaining in his memory.  He remembers how she looked on a certain day in a certain gown.  He thinks he remembers her dress.  He thinks he would know it again if he saw it.  But the truth is that he is remembering the woman herself, her face, her voice, her eyes—­above all, what she said, and how she said it.  If she wore a scarlet ribbon in her dark hair, a red rose in another woman’s hair will most unaccountably bring it all back to him, and he will not know why he suddenly sees the whole picture rise out of the past before his eyes, nor why his throat aches with the memory of it.

I know one of these men, whose descriptions of a woman’s dress are one of the experiences of a lifetime.  He loves the word bombazine.  His mother must have worn a gown of black bombazine during his impressionable age.  And he never will be successful in describing a modern gown until bombazines again become the rage.  This same dear man brought back to his invalid wife a description of a fashionable noon wedding, which consisted of the single item that the bride wore a blue alpaca bonnet.  It really would be of interest from a scientific point of view to know what suggested that combination to any intelligence, even if it were masculine.

I have more evidence to go on, however, when I wonder why the idea of the cost penetrates this same man’s brain when shown a new gown by any member of his family, all of whom he is weak enough to adore.  His daughter will say, “Papa, do look here just one minute!  How do you like my new gown?” And the answer never varies:  “Very pretty, indeed.  I hope it’s paid for.”  He will say that of a cotton frock made two years ago—­he never knows—­of a silk neglige, or of a ball-gown of the newest make.  The fashion produces no impression upon him, nor the material, nor the cut.  But let his daughter put on any kind of a pale green dress, and stand before him with the question, “Papa, how do you like my new gown?” While he is raising his head from his book he begins the old formula, “Very pretty.  I hope—­” Then he stops and says, “I have seen that dress before.  Child, you grow to look more like your mother every day of your life.”  And there is a little break in his voice, and before he goes on reading he takes off his glasses and wipes them, and looks out of the window without seeing anything, and sits very still for a moment.  It was the sight of the pale green dress.  When he came home from the war his lovely young wife, whom he lost when she was still young and beautiful, came to meet him, holding her baby son in her arms for his father to see, and she had worn a pale green gown.