'educated,' and the word instruction just means furnishing, but not instructed instead of educated."

This use of two words as equivalents, when their meaning is not the same, has had an injurious influence on our language in another instance: the practice of using the term "female as a synonym for “ woman "is vulgarizing our style of writing and our mode of speech.

وو

This serious error it has been our aim, for a number of years, to correct, if possible, by the influences of the "Lady's Book." There is a great improvement already observable in this matter of "restoring" the name of woman to its Eden significance and glory, and there seems no doubt of the result. In some future number, I shall go over the history of this error in our noble language; now I will give the following letter, which came to me as editress of the "Lady's Book."

THE IMPORTANCE OF WORDS.

"MY DEAR MRS. HALE, — The terms male and female are best confined to the distinction of sex, as they are used by the translators of the Bible,— men whose English cannot be improved in force, or directness of meaning. When they wish to speak substantively of the feminine half of creation, they say woman. When they speak of animated nature as a creation, 'male and female created he them.' That is, male and female of all animals; but,

when human beings are spoken of, it is man and woman. If you say, 'I saw a female in the field,' how can we know whether you mean a cow, a hen, a mare, or any other creature of female sex? 'An elegant female' may be a pea-hen, which is certainly very elegant. "A distressed female" may be a cat hunted by boys. What is the use of this obscurity? Why not say hen, if you mean the bird; cat, if you mean the beast; and woman, if you mean your mother, your sister, your friend?

"This vulgarity, like many others, has, through haste or negligence, crept into newspapers; from these, spread into the books and the language of half-educated persons, who have never lived in good company, and who want taste. Everybody knows the slippery ease of a descent into what is wrong. People who ought to know what is right in style, but who are careless, and fond of new diction, allow themselves to adopt slang and erroneous words: they communicate these faults to the atmosphere that surrounds them. Thus the 'pure well of English' is 'defiled' by solecisms and tasteless corruptions, which, if not arrested, take from our literature and our conversation all point, spirit, and propriety."

H°

I am the

V. CLOTHING.

same, without all diff'rence: when
You saw me last, I was as rich, as good;
Have no additions since of name or blood;
Only because I wore a thread-bare suit,

I was not worthy of a poor salute.

A few good clothes, put on with small ado,
Purchase your knowledge and your kindred too.

Heywood's Royal King.

OW came the art of dress to be considered a silly, trifling matter, when God's word so clearly reveals its high import? Heaven and earth were united in the discovery and application of this art, the first under the sun.

The merciful Creator acted in concert with his “fallen” children while Adam and Eve sought to make only a covering for their shame of sin, revealed to them in their nakedness, their heavenly Father made them clothing that typified his pitying love; thus He gave to their race the hope of salvation, through being clothed upon by the righteousness of Christ.

Dress, then, is something more than necessity of climate, something better than condition of comfort, something higher than elegance of civilization. Dress is the index of conscience, the evidence of our emotional nature. It reveals, more clearly than speech expresses, the inner life of heart and soul in a people, and also the tendencies of individual character.

Dress also shows the progress of man in his destiny of subduing the earth; it shows his duty to love and serve God, "from whom cometh every good and perfect gift," not only in material things, but in the invention, taste, and genius of the human mind: thus man has capacities for finding out the hidden treasures of nature, and fash- · ioning these for the use, the enjoyment, and the ornament of humanity.

A popular British writer gives the following remarkable illustrations on "The Importance of Clothing:"

"A life without clothes, not to mention other inconveniencies, would, we verily believe, be a life without thought. In fact, since the first garment of all, clothes have been knowledge, influence, and expression, and house and home to the wearer. Deep and fanciful minds have speculated on existence, and how they can arrive at the certainty of it in their own person; but they would never have attained to the power of constructing theories, working out problems, reasoning upon their being at all, but for the cultivating, educating, convincing instruction and logic of their clothes.

"It is fundamentally unreasonable, and a mistake in a sculptor of any age, to represent a philosopher as even partially undressed. 'I think, therefore I am,' is the conclusion of adult reason; the baby has leaped to a similar conclusion forty years sooner: 'I have shoes and a red sash, therefore I am.' People will call this infant dis

covery vanity, because they do not know what else to call it, and it seems always safe to attribute human action to some weak or bad motive; but our instinct serves us better than received opinion.

"The chord struck by this smiling, prettily-expressed, pointedly-enforced argument is one of fellowship; we like to see the child's pleasure in his movable skin, because we recognize an act of recognition of himself as a distinct, separate member and sharer of form, life, and thought. 'Yes, I am here,' he seems to say; 'I have something which belongs to me.' It is a consciousness of adjuncts, attributes, belongings, without which no sort of existence can be understood.

"And not only does dress first awaken to the infant thought the idea of separate existence and consciousness, but it continues, with vast numbers, the medium by which they realize their part and ownership in visible things. It is this feature of dress, as property, estate, possession, and, consequently, ambition, which is not recognized by the moralist. With the young, dress is almost the only thing they can call their own; with the great majority of women, it includes all to which they can ever, in strict truth, apply the potent, influential, entrancing words, 'my' and 'mine.'

"All general considerations of dress must, however, converge towards feminine costume. When we think of dress in the abstract, we mean woman's dress, whatever