petticoats, five or six worn at one time to hold out the long, voluminous dress skirts; and to feel that to be consistent they must give freedom to the body.  The proprietors of the “water cures” were, for the most part, in touch with all reform movements and their hospitality was freely extended to those engaged in them.  In this way the women had an opportunity to see the comfort which the patients enjoyed in their loose, short garments, and began to ask why they also should not adopt what seemed to them a rational dress.

Hon. Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, N.Y., the wealthy and influential reformer and philanthropist, became an earnest advocate of this costume, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, a beautiful and fashionable woman, was the first to put it on.  In Washington she wore it, made of the most elegant materials, during all her father’s term in Congress.  She was soon followed by his cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and with this social sanction it was adopted in 1851 and ’52 by a small number, including Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer, Dr. Harriet Austin, Celia Burleigh, Charlotte Wilbour, the Grimke sisters, probably less than one hundred in the whole country.  In order to be entirely relieved from the care of personal adornment, they also cut off their hair.  Miss Anthony was the very last to adopt the style.  In May, 1852, she wrote Lucy Stone that Mrs. Stanton had offered to make her a present of the costume, but she would not wear it.  In December she wrote again, dating her letter from Mrs. Stanton’s nursery, “Well, at last I am in short skirt and trousers!” At this time she also sacrificed her abundant brown tresses.

The world was not ready for this innovation.  There were no gymnasiums or bicycles to plead for the appropriateness of the costume and it was worn chiefly by women who preached doctrines for which the public was no better prepared than for dress reform.  The outcry against it extended from one end of the country to the other; the press howled in derision, the pulpit hurled its anathemas and the rabble took up the refrain.  On the streets of the larger cities the women were followed by mobs of men and boys, who jeered and yelled and did not hesitate to express their disapproval by throwing sticks and stones and giving three cheers and a tiger ending in the loudest of groans.[19] Sometimes these demonstrations became so violent that the women were obliged to seek refuge in a store and, after the mob had grown tired of waiting and dispersed, they would slip out of the back door and find their way home through the alleys.  Their husbands and children refused to be seen with them in public, and they were wholly ostracized by other women.  Mrs. Bloomer was at this time publishing a paper called the Lily, which was the organ for the reforms of the day.  Its columns were freely used to advocate the short dress, the paper thus became the target of attack and, because the costume had no distinctive name, it was christened with that of