OUTING CLUB CIRCULAR STIRS EDITORIAL PENS

A considerable amount of notoriety was given early last month to a circular addressed by the Dartmouth Outing Club to girls invited to Hanover to attend the annual Winter Carnival. The circular lamented the fact that in years past the girls had been more considerate of their appearance than of their comfort while here in the North country and urged that when they came to Hanover this year they would look "Pretty and Warm, not expensive and cold." Two editorials upon the subject of feminine dress stirred up by the Outing Club's circular are printed here, one from the NewYork Times and one from the Boston Herald.

BEAUTY AT DARTMOUTH

(From the New York Times)

The Dartmouth Outing Club, composed of undergraduate fresh air enthusiasts, is greatly daring when it attempts to set the cold weather fashions for its guests of the gentler sex. The winter carnival at Hanover, devoted to tobogganing, skating and hill climbing, begins this year on Feb. 9. In the invitations sent out the young women, who will be more welcome than the flowers in May, are urged to attend in woolen stockings, mittens, arctics and tam o'shanters. It must have been a sour and prosaic senior, utterly indifferent to consequences, who thus addressed the girls:

We saw you at the last carnival stand in the snow in pumps, silk stockings and a fur coat. We were sorry, and you did not look as happy as you tried to. So remember that there will be snow, that you will have to stand in it, and that it will be cold. We wish you to look pretty and warm, not expensive and cold.

Hanover, during the second week in February, is usually snowed in, with a temperature to make envious Northfield, Vt., the Medicine Hat of the East. The Connecticut rings under the speeding of steel-shod skaters. Old Ascutney in his ice cap, flanked by bleak forests, looks inhospitable, inaccessible. Indeed, his summit seems to belong to a glacial period that will never yield to the balmy approach of Spring. In the far distance the peak of Washington, a bright cloud on the horizon, challenges the alpinists of the outing club to try the ascent once more on snowshoes. To such a masked and silent country come the young women from haunts of fashion. This year they are bidden to be less chic and more comfortable. Was there ever such an affront to female beauty, which likes to look its best, blow high or blow low, freeze or swelter? Imagine pumps with heavy-ribbed, stockings of wool! The fur coat over all, of course, for it is warm as well as costly.

It may be that a jester has. spoken for the Dartmouth Outing Club. The girls, of course, will dress as they like, but the Fifth Avenue Winter styles are hardly the vogue at the Hanover carnival. Even New York has accepted those felt half-boots, loose at the top and flopping, probably too ugly to last. For New England Winter camps Professor SARGENT of Harvard is the arbiter of fashion. His pupils do not go in for grace, but for warmth and wear. And the young women who accept invitations to the Dartmouth carnival are expected to take part in all the Spartan sports of the undergraduates as well as to fox trot and jazz.

FAIR AND WARMER

(From the Boston Herald)

Dartmouth undergraduates admonish their prospective guests at the approaching winter carnival after this fashion:

"We saw you at last Carnival stand in snow in pumps, silk stockings and a fur coat. We were sorry—and you did not look so happy as you tried to. So remember that there will be snow, that you will have to stand in it, and that it will be cold. We wish you to look pretty and warm, not expensive and cold."

Fair and warmer! The trite phrase of the meteorologist seems to meet the situation. That the visitors should be fair surely is not a matter for discussion. That they should be warmer seems common sense, albeit many young women have hardily weathered a variety of exposure for fashion's sake and appear none the worse. If certain philosophers are right in believing feminine raiment indirectly subject to masculine whim, then Dartmouth youths may be pioneers in a movement for more comfy, not to say woolly, winsomeness.

To the oldsters there is perhaps a somewhat brusk frankness in the additional advice to bring woolen mittens and socks, high overshoes or boots, and warm tarn o' shanters. It should be remembered, however, that in the rising generation they do things differently. Those of us who are still a bit under the spell of Victorianism are prone to think we are not supposed, in public, to understand the detailed intimacies .of wardrobe.

"When as in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes."

We of the elders generalized where now they are specific. The feet beneath her petticoats like little mice stole in and out. If her stockings were of silk or wool, we were charry of calling attention to and she of displaying them. She was a phantom of delight, a lovely apparition. Now, it may be argued, she is an equally lovely revelation. But, pshaw, shall we go backward to Hugo's Marius and his sentimental agonies because the wind was unduly sportive with his beloved's draperies? Surely not now, when the corrective dust for the bad man's eye is 'well nigh superfluous. With a modern background, Marius, to use the current idiom, should worry.

Chivalry is not necessarily dead with the passing of clashing iron-mongery, nor is a grudge fight in the squared circle essential to uphold the charms of one's lady. Doubtless the Eskimo swain finds his damsel as she prepares the blubber in her father's igloo attractive despite the swathing sealskins. Probably he would be no better satisfied with the cafeau-lait sirens of Tahiti who caused susceptible seamen to mutiny in. the days before the southern seas were rediscoverd by the precursors of Capt. Traprock.

We must not lose sight of the circumstance that wooers have taken heart in spite of ruffs and stomachers, poke bonnets and hoop-skirts. In the long run, the mere question of silk or wool will not deter them. And that's all that matters. After all, it means much the same whether they say with the moderns, "She's some pip," or with the Knight of La Mancha, "Dulcinea Del Toboso is peerless."