the gradual application of pressure by stays, each successive pair of which is tighter than the last, will exclaim if her corsets are taken away, "I could not exist without their support. My back aches without them, and I feel as if I were falling to pieces."
I hope that my readers will not, by these remarks, be led to think that I want to subvert the very foundations of society. I have no desire to have the majority of my own sex rising up in outcry against me. All that I wish to do is to place before them certain simple facts in Nature and in physiology which must appeal to their reason more strongly than mere denunciation could possibly do, and as at present I am writing as a woman for women, the remarks I may make here should not be stigmatized as immodest.
There is a very popular saying, that "Familiarity breeds contempt;" this is, however, most untrue as regards the human body, for it is precisely those who know the least about it who despise and ill-treat it the most. The more we learn about the marvellous mechanism which performs our vital functions, the more wonderful and beautiful does it appear—beautiful, I say, for true beauty is the perfect adaptation of the means to the end, and the organs of the body are by nature perfectly adapted to the production of healthy life. "Know thyself" is a precept that has not yet been hearkened to as it should be; but if only it were obeyed our constitutions would not be injured and Nature outraged in the persons of her children, as now happens every day and every moment. What is there
