small tortures of doubt and anxiety we suffer in long balancing between what is more or less becoming, or better or worse economy,—the exasperating regrets that rend us when we find (as in five cases out of ten we do find), that we have made a mistake. Now, all this could be saved if we could go to a person for advice, who, from talent, study, and experience, knew better what we wanted than we do ourselves. Some women possess the special instinct for, and insight into dress, that others enjoy as regards cooking. Its combinations and results are as much a matter of course to them, as are those of his formulæ to the mathematician. With unerring judgment they select the right stuffs, the right shapes, and the right colours; the effect they see in their mind's eye, they reproduce to the eyes of others; and it is delicious and satisfying in proportion as, with the boldness of originality, they unite the refinement and taste diffused by culture through the educated classes of society. Such women I would make Costume-Artists, for they in truth possess, in this direction, the creative quality of genius. They use their talents now only for themselves, and within very narrow and conventional limits, while the comprehensive glance they are very apt to give one from head to foot is enough to make them dreaded by the whole circle of their acquaintance. But let us utilize this glance; convert it from an involuntary mental comparison between what one is and what one ought to be, into a kindly professional summing up and decision of what one can be, and dress for most of us would become a very different matter.
The post of the costume-artist would be in the consulting-room, on the first floor of the co-operative clothing-house, whither whoever wanted a dress could go and be advised as to the fabric she had best select for her purpose, and in what mode it should be made and trimmed. But as every woman might not care, or in every case be able to afford, to pay for the finished artistic touch or "air" in dress, the costume-artist, as such, need have no regular salary, but should ask so much for every consultation. Thus the establishment would avoid the mistake
