their animation, their freshness, and wide-awake appearance, and glowing cheeks, will make a far deeper impression than laced but sickly beauty.
'But I do not lace tight,' says one; 'Nor I,' says another; 'Nor I neither,' says a third—' I only make my clothes fit well' says each. 'Nor am I intemperate,' says the drunkard; 'Nor I either,' says the toper; I only drink till I feel better;' though both are drunk half their time. No old woman ever owns that she drinks strong tea, though it must be strong enough to bear up an egg before she can drink it. This very denial convicts them. Tight-lacers would fain make us believe that their waists are naturally small.
In view of all these multiplied and aggravated evils consequent upon tight-lacing—evils to the lacer, evils to posterity—I ground these appeals.
1. To you, industrious and intelligent young men, I appeal to raise your voice and combine your influence with mine and with other labourers in this good cause, to arrest so crying an evil, so fatal a fashion; lest your own wives break your hearts by dying in the prime of their days, and your children redouble the agony of this bereavement by dying in your arms, to be buried with their mothers. See to it that you shun tight-lacers, and get 'natural waists, or no wives.'
2. To you, fashionable young gentlemen, I appeal to cease requiring this fashion of the ladies. What is there in it so fascinating? Or do you wish to see how silly a fool you can make woman in girting herselfto death just to please you? Or what heinous crime has woman perpetrated, that you make her atone for it by the cruel penance of tightlacing? Or do you wish to weaken her mind and kindle her passions, so that you may the more often and easily seduce her? Or whatever be your motive, I beseech you, in the name of all that is human, to relax the rigour of this requirement. I call upon you in the name of our race, I even command you in the name of violated justice and virtue, that you no longer require this self-sacrifice, this offering up of chastity, this destruction of your race, at the hand of fashionable woman.
3 To you, ye tight-lacers, I appeal! Will you not break away from the shackles of these fashionable libertines whose main end is to ruin you? Will you not turn your eyes and hearts from the fashionable to the industrious—from rakes to the virtuous; from beasts to men; from your greatest pests to your best friends; from your destroyers to those who will save you; from the worst of husbands to the best? Do not, I beseech you, any longer follow in the paths of ruin to the abyss of destruction. Unloose your corset strings. Forsake corset stores. Clothe yourselves in the garb of natural beauty, and remember that you are born, not to court and please, not to be courted and pleased by, fashionable rowdies, but to become wives and mothers—not to glitter at a ball, nor to promenade Broadway gaily dressed, but to make home a paradise, and a family happy. Will you not listen to the persuasive voice of reason, as well as of present and prospective suffering, and turn a deaf year to the syren enticements of ruinous fashion? Come, be sensible. Act once more like rational beings, and no longer like simpletons. Do not kill yourselves, and murder your offspring, and torment your husband. Dress loosely, so as to feel and act naturally; for, rely upon it, you are more interesting in your loose morning dress, than when bound up in your corset strait-jacket.
4. To you, mothers, I sound my appeal. Will you kill your chihdren, by lacing them? A physician in Philadelphia, about two hours after the birth of a fine, healthy child, was called to it in great haste; it appeared to be dying with fits. On entering, he found it in a convulsed state, gasping for breath, and turning black, just from being bandaged too tightly. He tore open the bandage, and thus instantly relieved the child, See to it, ye nurses, that the clothes are very loose
