life-blood of their system. They might possibly have passed a dagger
too deeply info the heart, and died; but they never drew a ligature of
suffocation around it, and _expected to live_! They never tied up the
mouths of the millions of air-vessels in the lungs, and then taxed them
to the full measure of action and respiration. Even Pharaoh only
demanded bricks without straw for a short time; but the fashionable lady
asks to live without breathing for many years!

"The ancient Stoics taught that the nearest approach to apathy was the
perfection of their doctrine. They prudently rested in utter
indifference; they did not attempt to go beyond it; they did not claim
absolute denial of all suffering; still less did they enjoin to persist
and rejoice in it, even to the 'dividing asunder of soul and body.' In
this, too, you will perceive the tight-laced lady taking a flight beyond
the sublime philosopher. She will not admit that she feels the slightest
inconvenience. Though she has fairly won laurels to which no Stoic dared
aspire, yet she studiously disclaims the distinction which she faced
death to earn--yea, denies that she has either part of lot in the
matter; surpassing in modesty, as well as in desert, all that antiquity
can boast or history record."

We quote the following from Miss Sedgwick: "One word as to these small
waists: Symmetry is essential to beauty of form. A waist
disproportionately small is a deformity to an instructed eye. Women must
have received their notions of small waists from ignorant dress-makers.
If young ladies could hear the remarks made on these small waists by men
generally, and especially men of taste, they would never again show
themselves till they had loosened their corset-laces and enlarged their
belts."

LETTER-WRITING.

It sometimes happens that, in fashionable penmanship, the circumstance
that it is _to be deciphered_ seems to have been forgotten. "To read so
as not to be understood, and to write so as not to be read, are among
the minor immoralities," says the excellent Mrs. Hannah More. Elegant
chirography, and a clear epistolary style, are accomplishments which
every educated female should possess. Their indispensable requisites
are, neatness, the power of being easily perused, orthographical and
grammatical correctness. Defects in either of these particulars, are
scarcely pardonable. The hand-writing is considered by many, one of the
talismans of character. Whether this