SOME LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 529 all out of shape with heavy pendents ; others make - holes in their ears, and continue- to stretch them, until a man can pass his arms through his ears. It is a strange thing that the practice of flattening the head, in use among our Flathead Indians, does not appear to injure the brain. White men who have resided in that tribe report that any mother who should fail to flatten the heads of her children into the fashionable shape, would be thought a very indolent and unkind parent, since it would subject her children to the unsparing ridicule of their playmates. Nor could the girls ever hope for marriage, nor the boys aspire to have any influence in the tribe. The two worst fashions in deformity, according to Pro- fessor Flower, are cramping the feet and compressing the body. The sufferings undergone by Chinese girls, in reducing their feet to the fashionable size, are so severe and long continued as to excite our wonder even more than our pity. The learned professor gives a pair of pictures to show what ladies do with themselves when they try to conform to the fashion of half-yard waist. One presents to us the statue of the Venus of Milo in all the majestic amplitude of nature. The other exhibits the Paris waist of May, 1880, a silly, trivial, nipped figure of the fashionable number of inches in circuit, an object of equal horror to the anatomist and to the artist. We moderns, however, have one comfort. We have evolved the fashion of not following the fashion. Thus, the late Lord Palmerston never would wear boots which did not give to each of his toes all its natural rights, and so he set the fashion of not wearing the fashionable boot. In every American community there are now to be found ladies of the new school, who, if they follow the fashion at all, follow it at a rational distance, and know how to preserve their health and freedom without singularity. It is no longer difficult to follow the fashion of following the fashion, as Chesterfield advised, " three paces behind."
