have no lords of their own to love--have
conceived the notion that, by simulating an "interesting condition" (we
select the phrase accepted as the most delicate), they will add to their
attractions; and for this purpose an article of toilet--an india-rubber
anterior bustle--called the _demi-temps_, has been invented, and is worn
beneath the dress, nominally to make the folds fall properly, but in
reality, as the name betrays, to give the appearance of a woman advanced
in pregnancy.

No person will be found to say that the particular condition, when real,
is unseemly or ridiculous. What it is when assumed, and for such a
purpose--whether it is not all that and something worse--we leave our
readers to decide for themselves. It is said that one distinguished
personage first employed crinoline in order to render more graceful her
appearance while in this situation; but these ladies with their
ridiculous _demi-temps_, without excuse as without shame, travesty
nature in their own persons in a way which a low-comedy actress would be
ashamed to do in a tenth-rate theatre. The name is French, let us hope
the idea is also; and this reminds us of the title of a little piece
lately played in Paris by amateurs for some charitable purpose--_Il n'y
a plus d'enfants._ No; in France they may indeed say, "It is true _il
n'y a plus d'enfants_, but then have we not invented the _demi-temps_?"

And if each separate point of female attire and decoration is a sham, so
the whole is often a deception and a fraud. It is not true that by
taking thought one cannot add a cubit to one's stature, for ladies, by
taking thought about it, do add, if not a cubit, at least considerably,
to their height, which, like almost everything about them, is often
unreal. With high heels, _toupe_, and hat, we may calculate that about
four or five inches are altogether borrowed for the occasion. Thus it
comes to be a grave matter of doubt, when a man marries, how much is
real of the woman who has become his wife, or how much of her is her own
only in the sense that she has bought, and possibly may have paid for
it. To use the words of an old writer, "As with rich furred conies,
their cases are far better than their bodies; and, like the bark of a
cinnamon-tree, which is dearer than the whole bulk, their outward
accoutrements are far more precious than their inward endowments."

Of the wife elect, her bones, her debts, and her caprices may be the
only realities whic