Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/335

Rh a flat plate upon it, reaching down to the eyes, and then attaching behind this plate a hairbomb constructed of all manner of suspicious ingredients, which, although unexplosive, is most disagreeable to behold. But I would treat those monstrous fools, who think they have changed themselves into ethereal beings by the addition of the so-called "Grecian bend" still worse. A more shameless and more absurd coquetry with the pose of modesty than this disfigurement has never yet been practiced. All the lunatic asylums of Christendom cannot produce the equal of these caricatures of womanhood, who think they are making themselves immensely interesting and mythologically romantic, if they defy the scorn of every unsophisticated spectator, and, with abdomen artificially drawn in, an ostrich-like appendage in the rear, and stilts under their shoes, trip along the street as if they were afflicted with chronic colic, while they carry their arms before them like kangaroos, in a constant shielding of themselves against a fall on their nose. Recently I overheard a gentleman remarking to another, as one of these monsters of fashion passed by: "She is caparisoned like a horse, but has the saddle strapped on wrong side before." This is undoubtedly coarse, thought I, but nothing could be more appropriate than if every word would changc itself into a tangible lash, to drive this shameless woman — she was a pretty girl, scarcely more than seventeen, and her suit was worth at least two hundred