taste and the spirit of this people can be fixed upon as appropriate American costumes, something of our own.  From top to bottom we are copying.  The woman of wealth goes to Paris and Vienna for the real masterpieces in a season’s wardrobe.  The great dressmakers and milliners go to the same cities for their models.  Those who cannot go abroad to seek inspiration and ideas copy those who have gone or the fashion plates they import.  The French or Viennese mode, started on upper Fifth Avenue, spreads to 23d St., from 23d St. to 14th St., from 14th St. to Grand and Canal.  Each move sees it reproduced in materials a little less elegant and durable, its colors a trifle vulgarized, its ornaments cheapened, its laces poorer.  By the time it reaches Grand Street the $400 gown in brocaded velvet from the best looms in Europe has become a cotton velvet from Lawrence or Fall River, decorated with mercerized lace and glass ornaments from Rhode Island!  A travesty—­and yet a recognizable travesty.  The East Side hovers over it as Fifth Avenue has done over the original.  The very shop window, where it is displayed, is dressed and painted and lighted in imitation of the uptown shop.  The same process goes on inland.  This same gown will travel its downward path from New York westward, until the Grand St. creation arrives in some cheap and gay mining or factory town.  From start to finish it is imitation, and on this imitation vast industries are built—­imitations of silk, of velvet, of lace, of jewels.

These imitations, cheap as they are, are a far greater extravagance, for their buyers, than the original model was for its buyer, for the latter came from that class where money does not count—­while the former is of a class where every penny counts.  The pity of it is that the young girls, who put all that they earn into elaborate lingerie at seventy-nine cents a set (the original model probably sold at $50 or $100), into open-work hose at twenty-five cents a pair (the original $10 a pair), into willow plumes at $1.19 (the original sold at $50), never have a durable or suitable garment.  They are bravely ornamented, but never properly clothed.  Moreover, they are brave but for a day.  Their purchases have no goodness in them; they tear, grow rusty, fall to pieces with the first few wearings, and the poor little victims are shabby and bedraggled often before they have paid for their belongings, for many of these things are bought on the installment plan, particularly hats and gowns.  Under these circumstances, it is little wonder that one hears, often and often among their class, the bitter cry, “Gee, but it’s hell to be poor!”—­that one finds so often assigned by a girl as the cause of her downfall, the natural reason—­“Wanted to dress like other girls”—­“Wanted pretty clothes.”

This habit of buying poor imitations does not end in the girl’s life with her clothes.  When she marries, she carries it into her home.  Decoration, not furnishing, is the keynote of all she touches.  It is she who is the best patron of the elaborate and monstrous cheap furniture, rugs, draperies, crockery, bric-a-brac, which fill the shops of the cheaper quarters of the great cities, and usually all quarters of the newer inland towns.