When I behold the passion for ornamentation, and the corresponding power, I feel as if women had so far shown what they are bad for, rather than what they are good for.
Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue;that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any womans life both glorious and happy.
Women have that feminine sensuousness which delights in color and odor and richness of fabric. Their sense of beauty is untaught. A little lower in the scale of civilization, they would pierce their noses, and dye their fingernails, and wear strings of glass beads.
We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint; and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners.