d one, with a significant glance,
directing the eyes of his companion to the uncovered bust of a lady
immediately below. "Not since I was weaned," was the suggestive reply.
We are not aware whether the speaker was consciously or unconsciously
reproducing a well-known archiepiscopal _mot_.

Though our neighbors are not strait-laced, so far as bathing-costume is
concerned, they are less tolerant of the nude than we are in this
highly-favored land. There was lately a story in one of the French
papers that at a certain ball a lady was requested to leave the room
because a chain of wrought gold, suspended from shoulder to shoulder,
was the sole protection which it seemed to her well to wear on her
bosom. To have made the toilette correspond throughout, the dress should
have consisted of a crinoline skirt, which, though not so ornamental,
would have been not less admirable and more effective.

Of course there are women to whom nature has been niggardly in the
matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they
cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good,
since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:--"Autre
excentricite. C'est l'invention des _poitrines adherentes_ a l'usage
des dames trop etherees. Il s'agit d'un systeme en caoutchouc rose, qui
s'adapte a la place vide comme une ventouse a, la peau, et qui suit les
mouvements de la respiration avec une precision mathematique et
parfaite."

Of those limbs which it is still forbidden to expose absolutely, the
form and contour can at least be put in relief by insisting on the
skirts being gored and straightened to the utmost; indeed, some of the
riding-habits we have seen worn are in this respect so contrived that,
when viewed from behind, especially when the wearer is not of too
fairy-like proportions, they resemble a pair of tight trousers rather
than the full flowing robe which we remember as so graceful and becoming
to a woman. It will be observed that the general aim of all these
adventitious aids is to give an impression of earth and the fullness
thereof, to appear to have a bigger cerebellum, a more sensuous
development of limb, and a greater abundance of flesh than can be either
natural or true; but we are almost at a loss how to express the next
point of ambition with which the female mind has become inspired.

The women who are not as those who love their lords wish to be--indeed,
as we have heard, those who