The Case for Overalls and Mud

A mother wants the Fashion Editor to tell her what is suitable clothing for a boy of nine, with full instructions for making and costs of materials. Why can't fashion leave the children alone? Jam the young ladies into straight-front corsets, if you will; keep them thinking about what to wear and how to get it, at an age when they might better be playing golf or tennis or doing the supper dishes for mother as a side exercise; but for goodness sake, leave the boys alone! We have in mind a boy who will be ten his next birthday. You interest him in the subject of clothes. He does not want them. And because he has parents who remember their own youthful days, he does not have them to any extent. There isn't a belt or a button to interfere with the uses of his lungs or the movements of any of his muscles. If he wants to go in swimming it is possible that he will do so, dressed, and let his clothes dry on him. If you have never tried it that way you have missed good fun. This morning he wrestled with another boy in the dirt near the road. His mother did not have heart failure because one of the features of blue overalls is that they cannot be injured. In the afternoon he helped dig a robber's cave in a hillside lot. The blue overalls were much in evidence, and answered all purposes. The dirt that clung to them dissolved when he was sprinkling the lawn and took a shower bath. And when, at 8 p. m., he went to his room, his blue overalls slipped from his brown, straight body, and as he fell on to his little white bed, his 'Now I lay me' was lost in a dream of more happiness to come. Madam, for the summer of 1904, we advise blue overalls and plenty of liberty for your boy. Let fashion go hang.