Newspaper History presents media sourced from a United States newspaper dating back 108 years.

  • Consistency

    From The Tacoma Times, April 1, 1913.
     By Berton Braley.
     
    
     He raved at women’s folly
         In following the fads,
     Declared, with melancholy,
         His money went in scads
     To sate his wifie’s passion
         For shoes and hats and those
     Materials of fashion
         Like lingerie and hose.
     
     At corsets he was sneering,
         At powder and at paint,
     Tight shoes would set him jeering
         With words not few or faint;
     He laughed at bogus tresses;
         He scorned the hobble skirt,
     Condemning women’s dresses
         With vim and vigor curt.
     
     So wifie dressed one morning
         To please her hubby’s taste,
     All artifices scorning,
         Uncorseted her waist;
     Her shoes of size most ample
         (A hygienic last)
     She meant, she said, to trample
         Her follies of the past.
     
     Her nose was free from powder,
         Her hair was all her own,
     Yet far from feeling prouder
         At how her sense had grown,
     Her husband bellowed, “Woman,
         You look a perfect fright;
     Go dress like something human;
         You surely are a sight!”