rayed) and
whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their
graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had
specially created toothless whales of the Family _Balaenidae_ solely
for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient
for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the
Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to
procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But
these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though
sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a
Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and
run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the
thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus
express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aie, Aie."
Then this confounded corset had to be laced with pink ribbons at the
back and in front and both lacings demanded unusual suppleness of
arms and sense of touch in finger-tips; and when the corset went to
the wash the ribbons had to be drawn out, washed, ironed, and
threaded again.

From the front of the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet
awaiting their prey. But first must be drawn on the silk or
stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the
piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period. Then the
suspenders clutched the rims of the stockings with an arrangement of
nickel and rubber which no _man_ would have tolerated for its
inefficiency but would have thrown back in the face of the shopman
and have been charged with assault. In times of stress, at public
meetings the suspenders would release the stockings from their hold,
and the latter roll about the ankles of the embarrassed pleader for
Woman's Rights ("Who would be free, themselves must strike the
blow," and first of all throttle the modiste, thought Vivie).

Then there was the camisole that concealed the corset and had to be
"pinned" in with safety pins. The knickerbockers might not seek the
aid of braces; but they must be kept up by an elastic band. Over
the camisole, in 1910, came a blouse, pernickety and shiftless about
its waist fastening; and finally a hobble skirt, chiefly kept up by
safety pins, and so cut below as to hamper free movement of the
limbs as much as possible.

Day-boots often had as many as twenty-one buttons--and, mind you,
not _sham_, buttons, as I used to