with flexibility, and so with that constant exercise of the trunk muscles which alone can keep them in tone—keep them from degeneration and atrophy. As to the muscles of the back and abdomen affected by the girdle, a degree of support just sufficient to encourage them to their work, and prevent their giving it up in fatigue and despair, will exercise and strengthen them. A bandage tighter than is needed for this will do harm, not only by keeping the muscles idle, and so weakening them, but by compressing the abdominal viscera, and thus producing numerous evils.
There is a game children play called "wring the towel," in which two clasp hands and whirl their arms over their heads without losing hold, that every woman ought to practice to keep her muscles flexible. Hardly any exercise could be devised which would give play to so many muscles at once. A woman ought to be as lithe from head to heel as a willow wand, not for the sake of beauty only, but
