STRANGE IDEAS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 9 May 1907, Page 2

STRANGE IDEAS.

Tile Dishop of London Ims begun a crusade again-t the exhibition of ''living statuary.'' Ji is an extraordinary thing, in the first place, that thousands of people should llock to soj a human body, pretending ii is a statue, and in the second place that bishops or anybody else should be able to see anything more Immoral in the human frame than in the clothes that cover it. Modems have the wict'dest. notions of what is right and what is wrong. What God makes is concluded to be wrong by the Bishop of London and tens of thousands of good people. What the tailor makes is just the thing. Views of propriety aud impropriety change with passing ye.irs. .Not so very long ago it was considered most immodest for a lady to ride a bicycle, it is even now consid- I ercd rather degrading in some quarters for a lady, to ride a horse in a man's way. Heaven alone knows why. [" is unbecoming for a woman to take her hat off in church, and the height of illmanners if a man doesn't. A lady must cover her hands with gloves, and she may uncover her chest in the evening only. If she tripped along with short skirts and no stockings it would shock the world. Is there any fashion more absurd than the carrying of gloves by' a man ? Gloves are useful things to' wear in cold weather or to keep the hands clean, but to -patrol the streets holding an unworn glove in the baud is really quite as al»urd-as carrying one's best suit over the arm or wheeling one's underwear on a barrow. The idea appears to be that the public must, know one an afford u> buy gloes. The man who appeared in the streets in bathing clothes would a sensation. Women would Hack, however, to set; the I ante man in the same costume competing in a swimming race. Xo one knows a modern man or a woman. One only knows his or her clothes. It seems to be all right, too, because we have grown into the habit of judging by what a person ha- bought and not what he is.