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I know it is generally considered decidedly boorish to utter complaints against the ladies. But I am for the present a bachelor, and in that capacity claim freedom of speech as my peculiar privilege. In virtue of my unhappy position, then, I proceed to utter the first of a series of savage growls, wishing the ladies to understand me as fully in earnest in this; that when I growl loud, I must be supposed to mean what I growl.
For a month past, single gentlemen of every description have suffered in common with other fancy stocks, and have remained hopelessly below par. Those nice, trim, poetical, and polite young beaux, who, when no great undertaking agitates the female mind, are treated with kindness, and sometimes with distinction, by young ladies of discretion, are now, as it were, ruthlessly thrust and bolted out of the pale of feminine society by an awful demon who reigns supreme,–the Genius of Dress-making. The other evening, I pulled sixteen different bell-handles, in a gentlemanly manner, without obtaining admission into any house for the purpose of making a call; and when I succeeded in making an entrance at the seventeenth door by falsely representing myself as the agent of a dry-goods dealer, with a large box of patterns under my arm, I found the ladies in close conference with three dress-makers, studying a fashion-plate with an assiduity worthy of a better cause. A friend of mine, who has hitherto enjoyed the privilege of dining every day with six ladies, and has derived from their society great pleasure and profit, informed me yesterday, with a tear in each eye, that he had left the house for ever, the conversation being always turned upon topics with which he is utterly unacquainted, and conducted in a language which is about as intelligible to him as the most abstruse Japanese or the most classic Law-Latin.
If we are so fortunate as to obtain, by any stratagem, admission to hall or anteroom, in the mansions of our fair friends, our olfactories are regaled with a fragrance which we instinctively associate with tailors' shops, and which, I am informed, does in fact arise from the contact of woollen substances with hot flat-irons. As we advance, our ears are greeted by the resounding clash of scissors. Entering upon the field of action, our eyes are dazzled by a thousand fragments of rich and brilliant hues, and our personal safety endangered by swiftly flying needles and unsuspected pins. Gossip is at an end, for the thread must be continually bitten off. Dancing is child's play, a folly of the past. The piano is converted into a table, or an ironing-board. No games can be suggested but Thread-my-needle, and Thimble-rig. No books are at hand but Harper, with the fashion-plate at the end; the newspapers of the day are cut into uncouth shapes; and conversation (when conducted in English) hangs the unsuccessful Bloomer reform upon the gibbet of ridicule.
Now, if we would prevent utter disunion in society, something like a compromise must be effected, and to the ladies belongs the laboring oar. I use a metaphor which implies that they must do something they are little accustomed to do; they must make some concession. We have done all we could do, and I will make one statement which will convince the world that we bachelors are not obstinate without good reason. I confess (though it is not without some slight degree of shame that I own it), that I have, during the last week, consumed the greater part of every day in ineffectual study, trying to perfect myself in the terminology of the science of Fashion. I have listened attentively, and have gathered into a retentive memory sundry technicalities; but in vain have I submitted these terms of a strange dialect to the strictest etymological research. In vain have I conversed upon this subject with the most intelligent dry-goods dealers. In learning the few idiomatic phrases they employ, I have experienced only the satisfaction which young students in Greek literature feel, when they have, with infinite labor, mastered the alphabet of that rich and copious language.
But there is hope. Experience tells us, this state of things cannot last for ever. A few weeks, and our sufferings shall be rewarded, our forbearance repaid. Then shall gay streamers, pendent from rejuvenated bonnets, float, as of yore, across our promenades, and on the shoulders of Earth's fairest daughters the variegated mantle be again displayed. The streets, now deserted by the fair, will ere long glitter with the brilliant throng, and our sidewalks be swept once more by the gracefully flowing silk. Taper fingers shall condescendingly be extended to us, the smile of beauty beam on us, and witty speech banish our resentful remembrance of incomprehensible jargon.
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