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CHAP. X.] purpose. The armholes should be well sloped out over the shoulders.

The next article of dress to the chemise is the corset, and I approach this branch of my subject with great diffidence, for no part of ladies' dress has given rise to so much discussion as this, over which a war of words has raged fiercely for generations past.

Tight-lacing has been condemned for many centuries—in England by writers dating as far back as the reign of William Rufus, and in France the same moralist of the fifteenth century to whom I recently referred as condemning the low-necked dresses worn by ladies of rank in his time, goes on to say that these dresses were "so tight in the waist that they can scarcely respire in them, and often suffer much pain by it." Here, be it observed, however, that corsets, although the most convenient, are not the only means of tightening in the waist. Dresses worn without corsets may be laced so tightly that the unfortunate wearer can hardly breathe, and bands fastened firmly round the waist (Plate 5, line A, B) so as to serve the same purpose.

Perhaps that inner striving after a higher life, which is thought to be the especial prerogative of man, is the cause of the notable fact that universally human beings are dissatisfied with their own natural characteristics. They wish to make Nature hurry up to their ideal of what ought to be, and they therefore try to improve upon her. More than one nation compresses the skulls of its infants to