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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

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HOOP SKIRTS

To critically examine these hoops -- to get the best effect -- one should stand on the corner of Montgomery and look up a steep street like Clay or Washington. As the ladies loop their dresses up till they lie in folds and festoons on the spreading hoop, the effect presented by a furtive glance up a steep street is very charming. It reminds me of how I used to peep under circus tents when I was a boy and see a lot of mysterious legs tripping about with no visible bodies attached to them. And what handsome vari-colored, gold-clasped garters they wear now-a-days! But for the new spreading hoops, I might have gone on thinking ladies still tied up their stockings with common strings and ribbons as they used to do when I was a boy and they presumed upon my youth to indulge in little freedoms in the way of arranging their apparel which they do not dare to venture upon in my presence now.
- "The Fashions," Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, February 1866


AI image created by Barbara Schmidt

hoop skirt

 


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