Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/47

 properly made and used. The wearer may walk, or even waltz, with his leg of human make, and write readily with the hand he has bought of the manufacturer.

ON CORPULENCE AND LEANNESS.

Brillat Savarin is a charming writer, and his ''Physiologie du Gout is a delightful book, racy and spirituel''. But he has now and then a naughty vein of satire. For instance, in one passage he says it is the life-study of every woman, at least of every pretty woman, to become either a little stouter or a little thinner. Now of course we reject any such aspersion as this, but then it is true, and we don't deny it, that the precise medium between corpulence and leanness is hard to attain and harder to keep; so that if this matter attracts a good deal of attention, it is nothing more than right, æsthetically speaking, that it should. And when such a condition of body goes on to the extent of obesity on the one hand, or emaciation on the other, what charms can survive the heavy change?

Look at a siren of two hundred and fifty pounds, some female Falstaff. Her cheeks are red and swollen, her eyes are half hidden by the folds of flesh, her voice is short and husky, her figure is that of a barrel, her walk is a waddle. None but an Abyssinian can take her for a beauty. Add to this, that such a load of flesh is a positive discomfort, and often a distress,