d even to goddesses! Historians inform us that
the haughty Juno, discovering that her husband, Jupiter, was going the
way of all flesh and nearly every husband, borrowed her girdle from
Venus, with the result that when Jupiter returned home that evening from
business, he stayed with his wife--the club calling him in vain. Thus
was Juno justified of her "tightness."

But then, many a wife has cause to look upon a well-cut corset as her
best friend. And many a husband, too, has every reason to be grateful to
that article of his wife's apparel which the vulgar _will_ call "stays."
In earlier days a husband used to lock his wife in a pair of iron-bound
corsets when he went away from home, keeping the key in his pocket, and
thus not caring a tinker's cuss if his home were simply overflowing with
handsome gentleman lodgers! The poor wife couldn't retaliate by locking
her husband in such a virtuous prison, because men never wore such
things--which, perhaps, was one or the reasons why they didn't, who knows?

Also, the corset--or rather, the "bulge" of middle-age, which was the
real cause of their ever being worn--has always strongly influenced the
fashions. I don't know it as a positive fact, though I suspect it to be
true nevertheless, that the woman of fashion who first discovered that no
amount of iron bars could keep her from bulging in the right place, but
to the wrong extent, suddenly, thought of the pannier and the crinoline
and--well, that's where _she_ found that she was laughing. For almost
any woman can make her waist-line small: her trouble only really comes
when she has to tackle other parts of her anatomy which begin to show the
thickening of Anno Domini. Panniers and the crinoline save her an
enormous amount of mental agony. On the principle of "What the eye
doesn't see, to the imagination looks beautiful"--the early Victorian
lady was wise in her generation, and her modern sister, who shows the
world most things without considering whether what she exhibits is worth
looking at, is an extremely foolish person. One thing, however, which
women have never been able to fix definitely, is _exactly where_ her
waist should be. Men know where it is, and they put their arms round it
instinctively whenever they get the chance. But women change their mind
about it every few years. Sometimes it is down-down-down, and sometimes
it is under their armpits. A few years ago a woman who had what is known
as a "short