gging skirts, the bands
engirding the body, the pinching, deforming boot, and the ruinous
social dissipation of fashionable society. These will account for
much of the feebleness of young women and girls. For they exhaust
nervous force, make freedom of movement a painful impossibility,
and frequently shipwreck the young girl before she is out of
port.

We have a theory, generally accepted in civilized society, which
we never formulate in speech but to which we are very loyal in
practical life. This theory, put in plain language, is as
follows: God knows how to make boys; and, when He sends a boy
into the world, it is safe to allow him to grow to manhood as God
made him. He may be too tall or too short, for our notions, too
stout or too thin, too light or too dark. Nevertheless, it is
right, for God knows how to make boys. But when God sends a girl
into the world, it is not safe to allow her to grow to womanhood
as He has made her. Some one must take her and improve her
figure, and give her the shape in which it is proper for her to
grow.

Accordingly, the young girl comes some day from the dressmaker
with this demand: "Mme. ---- (the dressmaker) says that I am
getting into horrid shape, and must have a pair of corsets
immediately." The corsets are bought and worn, and the physical
deterioration begins.

Miss Frances E. Willard thus touchingly refers to the bondage of
fashion:

"But there came a day--alas! the day of my youth--on which I was
as literally caught out of the fields and pastures as was ever a
young colt; confronted by a long dress that had been made for me,
corsets and high-heeled shoes that had been bought, hair-pins and
ribbons for my straying locks, and I was told that it simply
'wouldn't answer' to 'run wild' another day. Company from the
city was expected; I must be made presentable; 'I had _got_ to
look like other folks.'

"That was a long time ago, but I have never known a single
physically reasonable day since that sweet May morning, when I
cried in vain for longer lease of liberty."

Mrs. Frances E. Russell, whose significant paper read at the Woman's
Council elicited universal approbation, in the following extract from
her able essay in THE ARENA sounds a more hopeful note than her
illustrious predecessors, for she is near