I am sure you are all worn out or you would not feel so intensely about the dress.  I never shed a tear over it in my life or came within a thousand ages of martyrdom on account of it; and to be compelled to travel in rain and snow, mud and dirt, in a long dress would cost me more in every respect than the short dress ever did.  I don’t think I can abandon it, but I will have two skirts.  I have this feeling:  Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance, that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work out her own emancipation?...  It is a part of the “mint, anise and cumin,” and the weightier matters of justice and truth occupy my thoughts more.

She did abandon the costume, however, before the year was ended, as did most of the others.  The establishment of gymnasiums and the encouragement of athletic sports among women eventually made a short dress an acknowledged necessity, and the advent of the bicycle so thoroughly swept away the old prejudice that the word “Bloomers” no longer strikes terror to the heart, nor does the wearing of a short skirt ostracise a woman and destroy her good works.  Miss Anthony wore hers a little over a year.  It was not very different from the bicycle dress of the present day, the skirt reaching almost to the shoe tops and made of satin or heavy merino, and yet for years afterwards she was described as attending meetings in “the regulation bombazine Bloomers,” and it was impossible to convince people to the contrary until they had seen her with their own eyes.  She herself said in regard to it:  “I felt the need of some such garments because I was obliged to be out every day in all kinds of weather, and also because I saw women ruined in health by tight lacing and the weight of their clothing; and I hoped to help establish the principle of rational dress.  I found it a physical comfort but a mental crucifixion.  It was an intellectual slavery; one never could get rid of thinking of herself, and the important thing is to forget self.  The attention of my audience was fixed upon my clothes instead of my words.  I learned the lesson then that to be successful a person must attempt but one reform.  By urging two, both are injured, as the average mind can grasp and assimilate but one idea at a time.  I have felt ever since that experience that if I wished my hearers to consider the suffrage question I must not present the temperance, the religious, the dress, or any other besides, but must confine myself to suffrage.”  With the exception of that one year, Miss Anthony always has been particular to follow, in a modified and conservative form, the prevailing styles, and has fought strenuously the repeated efforts to graft any kind of dress reform on the suffrage movement.