THE LOST ATLANTIC. 435 



bles as takes up its line of march there, would have driven Praxiteles mad! The 

 expression, " cofifin-shaped," is used advisedly, for the regulation womanly out- 

 line, which the fashionable dressmaker manufactures, refusing to fit a woman 

 who will not allow herself to be so metamorphosed, is more like that of a coffin 

 than anything and is as far removed as a cofifin from all the bloom and beauty of 

 nature. It is useless to talk to a woman who possesses this form, about her 

 health, for in nine cases out of ten a fashionable woman prefers appearances to 

 health. But convince her that she is not beautiful in this guise, so educate her 

 taste that she recognizes the absurdity of her figure and apparel, and the battle 

 of health and maternity would be won without a struggle. This is one of the 

 things which art culture can do for America, and it is a thing so imperative that 

 it would be worth the while of every father who possesses a family of blooming 

 daughters, to invest a good share of his patrimony immediately in " casts" — cast 

 of the beautiful old Greek sculpture which would teach his daughters how much 

 nobler it is to stand before the world as large brained and perfectly developed 

 women, than to cramp heart and soul to an ideal which can never go beyond the 

 dressmaker's art. 



ARCHEOLOGY. 



THE LOST ATLANTIS. ^ 



MRS. H. M. HOLDEN. 



If civilization be an inheritance, from what parent nation came the ancient 

 skilled races whose handiwork and high civilization are traced with unmistakable 

 identity from the Mediterranean nations of the Eastern Hemisphere to Mexico, 

 Central America, Peru, and the mounds of the Mississippi Valley of the Western 

 Hemisphere? 



In the marked similarity of their traditions, religious beliefs, arts, customs 

 implements, and weapons — is not some common source, some original home in- 

 dicated ? 



Many inquiries are being pressed concerning the earliest people of the west- 

 ern world. A recent writer introduces his article with this question : ** From 

 what far off land came the primal pioneer to the shores of America?" And 

 another: "Who were the earhest inhabitants of America?" Our savage red 

 man no longer furnishes an answer to these questions. He is but the degraded 

 relic of a noble ancestry whose arts and high civilization are traced back to the 

 same period as that of the earliest civilization in the Old World. From a strict 

 archaeological standpoint the terms Old and New World are inapplicable as re- 

 ferring to the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. All historical students have 



1. Read at the Social Science Convention of Kansas and Western Missouri, Nov. 7, 1884. 



