r
martyrial sufferings, to find that every little girl in England was
for some years both able and willing to endure a regular torture,
without apparently having the least idea of making any merit by her
patience. Present pains, possible consequences--such as red noses, bad
breath, permanent ill health, death itself--were made light of. There
being no imaginable good end to be served by it, was nothing to the
point. The corsets were, for a time, a proud symbol of the martyr
power of the Sex. You would see an example set forth in each
milliner's window, carefully disposed under a glass-shade, as
indicating the pride they felt in it as a sort of badge of honour. It
is to be hoped that a few special copies will be preserved in our
antiquarian museums, and, if possible, they should be such as can be
certified to have killed their wearers, in order to shew to future
generations what the women of our age could submit to _in that
particular line_--not _generally_ of course, for it is to be expected
that the women of the future will have equal sufferings in some other
walk to boast of.

It is not always, indeed, that the Sex have a master torment, like
tight stays, to endure; but certainly they are never without some
source of either anguish or inconvenience to keep their martyr power
in exercise. For one thing, they are sadly afflicted with over-large
shoes. Strange to say, though there are artists pretending to be
ladies' shoemakers, the sex never get shoes sufficiently small. Every
now and then, they are receiving some monstrous affront, in the form
of a pair of shoes that might hold sufficient meal for a pudding
besides their feet. From this cause flow certain pains and penalties
in the form of corns and bunions, insuring that they shall never take
a step in life without being reminded of the doom of suffering which
has been passed upon them. To speak of the simple incommodations which
they suffer from dress were endless. At one time, they are all blown
out into sleeve, so that a miscellaneous dinner-party looks like a
series of men and women with feather-beds stuck between each pair. At
another time, the sleeve, while moderate in the region of the upper
arm, is fashioned wide at the bottom, as if to allow of the fair
wearers laughing in it--the joke, however, being all against
themselves, seeing that the pendulous part is a source of continual
trouble and worry, from its trailing through every sauce and tart that
may be