572 PLAIN PACTS FOE OLD AND YOUNG 



velous exhibition of legerdemain in logic by which the 

 Professor at one moment advocates the wearing of 

 skirts and petticoats on the score of warmth for the 

 limbs, and the next insists that for the other extremity 

 of the body, which is certainly much more closely re- 

 lated to the organs of greatest importance in the vital 

 economy, no clothing whatever is needed. 



''It has been strenuously urged by many so-called 

 sanitary reformers, that women should support their 

 skirts by straps passing over the shoulders, and some 

 few have been induced to adopt the method. It is to 

 be hoped that it will not spread. A woman's hips are 

 proportionallj^ wider than those of a man, and there 

 is no better way of keeping up the many petticoats 

 that it is sometimes necessary to wear, than by fasten- 

 ing them with strings or bands around the waist, over 

 the corset. Shoulder-straps hinder the movements of 

 the chest, and tend to make those who wear them 

 round-shouldered. Besides, they could not well be worn 

 with a low-necked dress. Even if trousers should come 

 into general use for women, it would be better that 

 they should be kept up by the support of the hips than 

 by suspenders passing over the shoulders. It is true 

 that many men wear suspenders, and this fact may 

 perhaps lead to their adoption by some women; but 

 again no inconsiderable number of the male sex sup- 

 port their trousers from the hips. If comparatively 

 narrow-hipped man can do this, wide-hipped woman 

 ought to be able to do it better." 



This paragraph certainly reads like the ingenious 

 advertisement of a fashionable modiste, prepared after 

 the style of the latest pattern of quack medicine adver- 

 tisements. The Doctor speaks as one in authority 

 when he says, "There is no better way," etc. Did he 



