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!”