action, that hand lays the foundation of bitter sufferings; at the price
of which, and probably of a premature death, the advantage must be
purchased of rendering her figure as unlike as possible to all the
models of female beauty, universally admitted to be such, because they
are chiselled after nature itself. I have seen pictures, and I have read
harrowing descriptions, of the murderous consequences of thus flying in
the face of the Creator's skill, and presuming to mend, to improve, his
perfect work; but my own experience is worth a thousand treatises and
ten thousand illustrations, in bringing conviction to my mind. Once,
when introduced, as it is called, to the public, through the medium of a
ballroom, I did join in persuading my father to allow of a fashionable
lacing-up, though by no means a tight one. I felt much as, I suppose, a
frolicksome young colt feels when first subjected to the goading
apparatus that fetters his wild freedom. I danced, but it was with a
heavy heart and laboring breath; I talked, under the influence of a
stupefying headache, and on my return home flew to my apartment and cut
the goodly fabric in pieces; nor was I ever afterwards tempted so to
tempt my all-wise Maker by saying to the frame that he had fashioned and
supplied with means of healthful growth, "Hitherto shalt thou go and no
further."

Compressure of the feet was with equal strictness forbidden by my
judicious father. This vain custom is perhaps not so fatal as the other,
but it produces many evils. Coldness of the extremities may certainly
exist where nothing of the kind has been practised; but while rejoicing
that I, experimentally, know nothing of it, I cannot help recollecting
that the bounding pulse which plays so joyously through my veins was
never impeded in any part; and feeling this, I would no more expose a
girl to one infliction than I would to the other. Do Christian mothers
take a sufficiently serious and prayerful view of this subject, as