an untimely, grave, but, in case you become mothers, your children also with you or before you into their graves. If you wish to exclaim under a burden of nervousness and mental distress which you cannot support, 'O wretched life that I live!'—if you wish to break the heart of your husbands and friends by your premature death, and have your own souls pierced through with indescribable anguish by the death of your children; if you wish to die while you live, and to die finally before your time; if you wish every sensible man that sees you to think 'how foolish, how wicked, that woman is; 'if you would exchange the rosy cheek of health for the portion of laced and sickly beauty, and the plump, round, full chest and form of unlaced health, for the poor, scrawny, haggard, sunken, and almost ghastly look of all who lace—then buy corset after corset, and lace tighter and tighter, and still tighter, and keep laced night and day till the wheels of life, compressed within limits too narrow longer to continue in action, cease to move, and till that foundation of life and vitality and happiness, flowing from these compressed organs, is dried up at its very source, and ceases longer to flow.
But why does woman insist upon perpetuating so painful, so self-torturing, as well as immoral and injurious a practice? What-all-powerful, all-prevading motive prompts this self-sacrifice, this self-immolation upon the altar of fashion? Does woman require this painful fashion at the hand of woman, or do gentlemen require it? And if gentlemen, what kind of gentlemen? The sedate, the religious, the good? Or the young bloods and city gallants? I answer without one iota of fear or contradiction, the latter classes, All intelligent men of all ages and stations, despise and discountenance this fashion But fashionable young gentlemen, such as theatre-goers, ball-makers, dandies, and gentlemen of leisure, demand it, and that too for a reason given above, and their demand is acceded to by almost the whole of the other sex, But how happens it that this class is obeyed, while the admonitions of the other are unheeded? 'I pause for a reply! 'None? No! none! The fact I know and deplore—the reason, what is it? Whocan tell why it is that 'when a fashionable young man, especially a city dandy, without brains or morals, and known to be licentious, yet dressed superbly in unpaid-for fashionables, recommended only by a handsome bow and a surplus of impudence, enters a country village or town, he sets every feminine heart in it on a flutter? Why does each strive to secure his arm, and expose all her charms to gain him as a lover? Can it be because he excites her Amativeness and Adhesiveness? Does this set them crazy after him, to the neglect and rejection of those whose motives are pure, hearts true, and hands able to support them comfortably? Are women so weak or crazy? Tight-lacing has already been shown to produce partial insanity, and also to excite impure desires, and putting this and that together, may explain one of the causes of this deranged preference.
But their education has some hand in this matter. I blame woman less than I pity her. It is her nature to adapt herself to man, and to conform to his requisitions; and it is the fault of her education in part that she strives to please this ruthless, immoral, corrupt class, to the neglect of the industrious, home-spun classes.
Another evident object of the ladies in their lacing and padding, is to make themselves, not the better, but the more handsome; yet corsets destroy the very beauty which they are employed to impart; for beauty depends upon health, which tight-lacing impairs, thereby rendering them scrawny and pale, (nor can rogue supply the place of the rosy cheek of health,) besides shortening the period of youth. Air and exercise are the best means of promoting health, and of improving the beauty. Those who keep up their physical tone and vigour, will be sprightly and interesting, and even though they may be homely, yet
