A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

take it off, at night, when it is not needed. It should be hung so that it can be well aired, during the night. But the practice, by which females probably suffer most, is, the use of _tight dresses_. Much has been said against the use of corsets by ladies. But these may be worn with perfect safety, and be left off, and still injury, such as they often produce, be equally felt. It is the _constriction_ of dress, that is to be feared, and not any particular article that produces it. A frock, or a belt, may be so tight, as to be even worse than a corset, which would more equally divide the compression. So long as it is the fashion to admire, as models of elegance, the wasp-like figures which are presented at the rooms of mantuamakers and milliners, there will be hundreds of foolish women, who will risk their lives and health to secure some resemblance to these deformities of the human frame. But it is believed, that all sensible women, when they fairly understand the evils which result from tight dressing, and learn the _real_ model of taste and beauty for a perfect female form, will never risk their own health, or the health of their daughters, in efforts to secure one which is as much at variance with good taste, as it is with good health. Such female figures as our print-shops present, are made, not by the hand of the Author of all grace and beauty, but by the murderous contrivances of the corset-shop; and the more a woman learns the true rules of grace and beauty for the female form, the more her taste will revolt from such ridiculous distortions. The folly of the Chinese belle, who totters on two useless deformities, is nothing, compared to that of the American belle, who impedes all the internal organs in the discharge of their functions, that she may have a slender waist. It was shown, in the article on the bones and muscles, that exercise was indispensable to their growth and strength. If any