waist" was referred to by other women as a "Poor Thing."
Then the short-waisted woman came into fashion--or rather, fashions
fashioned themselves for her benefit--and her long-waisted sister had to
struggle to make her waist look to be where really her ribs were. Only a
few weeks back a woman's waist and bust and hips had all to be definitely
defined. Nowadays they bundle them all, as it were, into clothes cut in
a sack-line, and are the very last letter of the very latest word in
fashion. I can well imagine that a few years hence women will be as
severely corseted as they were a short time ago.

I can well remember the time when a woman who held "views" and discarded
her stays sent a shudder through the man who was forced to dance with
her--though whether they were pleasurable shudders or merely shuddery
shudders I do not know. Nowadays, the woman who wears an out-and-out
corset, tightly laced, is either a publican's wife or is just bursting
with middle age. The corset of to-day is little more than the original
plaited grass originated by Mother Eve--in width, that is; in texture it
is of a luxury unimaginable in the Garden of Eden.

Women are not so concerned nowadays that their waist should be the
eighteen inches of 1890 beauty as that their figure elsewhere should not
presume their condition to be at once national and domestic. The modern
corset starts soon and finishes quite early. Thus the cycle from Mother
Eve is now complete. "As we were" has once more repeated itself.

The only novelty which belongs to to-day is that _men_ are wearing
corsets more than ever. A well-known _corsetiere_ has opened a special
branch for her male customers alone. Their corsets, too, are of a most
beautiful and elaborate description--ranging from the plain belt of the
famous athlete to the brocade, rosebud-embroidered "confection" of a
well-known general. Perhaps--say fifty years hence--my grandson will be
writing of male lingerie, and men will rather lose their reputations than
lose their figure. Well, well! if we live in a topsy-turvy world--as
they say we do--let's all be topsy-turvy!

_The Glut of the Ornamental_

How strange it is that human endeavour is, for the most part, always
expended upon accomplishing something for which no one has any particular
use, while the things which, as it were, are simply begging to be done,
are usually among the great "undone" for which we ask forgiveness every
Sunday mornin