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Caption: Book - Banks of the Boneyard (Charles Kiler)
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CHAPTER THREE Escapades, the Faculty, and Progress Under Dr. Burrill N O T H E R dress reform movement for women got under way about 1890. One of the leaders was Mae Wright Sewall of Indianapolis, a well-known writer and lecturer of that period. She was invited to talk to the young women at the University of Illinois on the evils of their styles in dresses, and talked so convincingly about the horrors of the corset, the tightwaisted dresses, the high heels on shoes, the heavy hats, the big sleeves, etc., that the girls agreed with her that they would be deformed for life unless they adopted the uniform she recommended. This consisted of no hat at all, no corset, nor any other tight fitting garment, and a loose sailor suit of heavy material, with low-heel shoes. Now those among us who can remember the days of the big picture hats pinned on to a huge bunch of hair, the highneck dresses fitted over wasp-like waists, the long skirts that trailed in the dust of the unpaved streets, the bustles, and the high shoes laced up above the ankles, will agree that the uniform suggested by Mrs. Sewall was a decided contrast. It was so different that it was funny, and one of our band boys by the name of Arnold Beuthein, whose sense of humor was overdeveloped, discovered thirty-five or forty girls hiding back of the bookstacks in the Library, all dressed alike in the sailor uniform. These girls were waiting to march into chapel in a body, as no one of them had the nerve to appear alone. Arnold rushed down to the band, which was about to play the march for the parade into the chapel, told the band boys about his discovery, and suggested that the dress reform costume was such as to cause a sickening feeling something like one has when he faints. When the girls appeared at the door every man in the band dropped his instrument and fainted. George Huff kicked his bass drum across the platform, with the cymbals clanking at every turn, and the girls marched in with the eyes of the student body and the faculty focussed upon them. Were they mad? Ill say they were, and they took their vengeance out on a perfectly innocent member of the band; a young man 42 A
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