which is but another name--as modernly interpreted--for the
ballot. Now we are persuaded that it would be wise for the States to
concede this, and thereby open a new channel to them for thought, at
once weakening their hold on fashion, and enlarging their views of life
and its requirements. Good to the race, it would seem, must come of any
change whereby the rising generation shall have less of fashion and its
attendant evils, and more of health, with its accompanying blessings.

How few of perfectly healthy girls do we see among all those with whom
we are each severally acquainted. Tight lacing, began in early
childhood, is one of the chief of evils. You ask a girl of twelve years
if she is not too tightly dressed, and the reply is "no;" and the mother
is sure to argue that if the girl does not complain it is none of the
father's business to meddle. The fact is, the child has been gradually
brought to that state of unconsciousness of any discomfort by having
been subjected to this abominable process from a very tender age, and
being continued each year, the waist is scarce half the natural size it
should have been at womanhood. Take a country girl who has grown up free
from this practice, and has a well-developed frame, and put on her the
harness of her fashionable sister, and draw it to the point the latter
is accustomed to wear it, and you shall see whether there is any wincing
or no. The argument of these unreasoning mothers is that of the Chinese,
who dwarf their children's feet by beginning at an early period, and,
doubtless, if these youths were similarly questioned, they, too, would
complain of no inconvenience.

In the management and care of children, fond parents seem, in these
later years, little else than a bundle of absurdities. For instance,
take children of from three to ten years, and you shall see, in a
majority of cases, when dressed for the street, their backs ladened with
fold on fold of the warmest clothing, while their poor knees are both
bare and blue.

Ah! we forget, perhaps, that the physician and undertaker must live; and
then the army of nurses and others, too, are to be provided for, quite
as the fashionable lady would make reply to any _impertinence_ in
matters of her dress, that it kept an army of sewing-girls employed who
would otherwise be left to starve!

One of our most vigorous writers, treating this subject, says:--

"Showy wardrobe, excessive work with the needle, where it is don