|
|
|
More "Corset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... staying. Can anything more disgraceful be imagined? They all console me by saying there is no one in Baton Rouge who could possibly wear my dresses without adding a considerable piece to the belt. But that is nonsense. Another pull at the corset strings would bring them easily to the size I have been reduced by nature and bones. Besides, O horror! Suppose, instead, they should let in a piece of another color? That would annihilate me! Pshaw! I do not ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... pupils each year, she is the greatest since Carrienta. But I must have first right to her. You hear, first right! I will teach her free of charge. Leave your name and address with my secretary as you go out. Send her Monday at four. Loose clothing. Not even corset waists. Good afternoon. Good-by—Zoe"—placing his hands on her curls as if ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... This is inevitable in a scientific age, and the result has been on the whole an advance of knowledge, and improved treatment of specific ailments. The danger is apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, who has only one hobby and traces every human ill to strong liquor or tobacco, or the corset, or taxation of personal property, or denial of universal suffrage, or the eating of meat, or the want of the centralization of nearly all initiative and interest and property in the state. The tendency of the accomplished specialist in medicine is to refer all physical trouble to the ill conduct ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to get away, for he feared his mother's plaint for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills now sewed up in the buxom Leah's corset. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... yet snubbed the moment they would be wise. A million shops spread their nets, and entice them by their direst foible. Their very mothers—for want of medical knowledge in the sex—clasp the fatal, idiotic corset on their growing bodies, though thin as a lath. So the girl grows up, crippled in the ribs and lungs by her own mother; and her life, too, is in stays—cabined, cribbed, confined: unless she can paint, or act, or write novels, every path of honorable ambition is closed ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the elements of a noble woman; one whose heart is so large that she has to wear a little larger corset than some, but one who will make her home happy, and who is a friend to all; one who would walk further to do a good deed, and relieve suffering, than she would to patronize an ice cream saloon; one who would keep her mouth shut a month before she would ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... didn't never marry, I'll bet a hoss. If Redruth had married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a lock of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort of articles is as good as a husband to some women. I'd say she played out a lone hand. I don't blame no woman for old man Redruth's abandonment of barber shops ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... to find Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind, And be safe in my corset-lacing. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... and friends with a genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of all her days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing, manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and her corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her appearance was long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain, nor was she particularly well satisfied with herself when it was done. That about one-fifth ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... costume—with which, of course, she wore no corset, but only a narrow belt—was very becoming: a light blouse, a mouse-coloured skirt, close fitting over the hips and not reaching to her ankles, grey silk stockings, and white suede shoes guiltless ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Josephine. "No one would know it was a watch." She liked the idea of having to make a parcel such a curious shape that no one could possibly guess what it was. She even thought for a moment of hiding the watch in a narrow cardboard corset-box that she'd kept by her for a long time, waiting for it to come in for something. It was such beautiful, firm cardboard. But, no, it wouldn't be appropriate for this occasion. It had lettering on it: "Medium Women's 28. Extra Firm Busks." It would be almost too much of a surprise for Benny to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... no ordinary woman of Western make. She had been imported from the East by her husband three years before. She had been 'forelady in a corset factory,' when matrimony had enticed her away, and the thought that walked beside her as she baked, and washed, and fed the calves, was that some day she would go 'back East.' And this in spite of the fact that for those ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... birds singing, and children brought up to colder water than their fathers. It should have been our business to pursue health till we no longer needed the interior of the chemist's shop, the optician's store, the hairdresser's, the corset-maker's, the thousand and one emporiums which patch and prink us, promoting our fancies and disguising the ravages which modern life makes in our figures. Our ambition should have been to need so little that, with our present ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... At mademoiselle's shrieks on the landing, a maid ran to a doctor's office near by but did not find him; four other women employed in the house assisted mademoiselle to lift Germinie up and carry her to the bed in her mistress's room, on which they laid her after cutting her corset lacings. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... had walked in the sun and had started to run and had fallen over some stumps. Instantly they saw that she had been prostrated by the heat, and having recently studied "First aid to the injured" they proceeded to remove her blouse and open her corset, when lo! there upon a silver chain around her neck was not only Ethel Hollister's ring but another belonging to Honora Casey. She had missed it a few days after Ethel had lost hers, but she wisely refrained from speaking of it to anyone but Patty Sands, adding, "Shure, it would only ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... is also an opportune time to demonstrate to what extent serious results may follow mistakes in dressing. The habit of permitting growing girls to constrict the waist, to bind and pull the abdomen by too tight garters, or too tight corset, is wrong, and no mother should permit it. In another part of the book, this matter is taken up more fully, but if it is explained to the girl while she is considering the subject of menstruation, she may more quickly and more fully ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... pretended to do so, over the then Vavasour of Weston. Money lenders, too, were pressing him hard, and he had become desperate. Rushing madly into the house, he plunged a dagger into one and then into another of his children, and afterwards tried to take the life of their mother, a steel corset which she wore luckily saving her life. Leaving her for dead, he mounted his horse with the intention of killing the only other child he had, and who was then at Norton. But being pursued by some villagers, his horse stumbled and threw him ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... grasses, fur away from diamonds, and satins, and big words, and dogs, and parasols, and so many, many that are a chasin' of her and a follerin' of her up, it seemed more as if she loved to get away from it all, and get where she could take her crown off, lay down her septer, onhook her corset, and put on a long loose gown, and lounge round and enjoy ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... continual rambles along the beach in her girlish days, of exquisite purity. Her education, I grieve to say, had been most shamefully neglected; her mother, though a most exemplary woman, both as a Christian and a member of society, had never tied her up in a fashionable corset to improve her figure, nor sent her to a fashionable boarding school to improve her mind; the consequence was that she knew nothing of the piano,—Virgil seems to have had the gift of prophecy with regard to this part of modern education, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... unable to master my impatience I unfastened a diamond brooch which pinned her ruffle. Dear reader, there are some sensations so powerful and so sweet that years cannot weaken the remembrance of them. My mouth had already covered with kisses that ravishing bosom; but then the troublesome corset had not allowed me to admire all its perfection. Now I felt it free from all restraint and from all unnecessary support; I have never seen, never touched, anything more beautiful, and the two magnificent globes of the Venus de Medicis, even if they had been animated by the spark of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... would make him remain seated near her by the fire, until twelve o'clock at night, singing soft refrains, and at every opportunity showed her fair shoulders, and the white temptations of which her corset was full, and casting upon him a thousand piercing glances, all without showing in her face the thoughts that ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... before it stops. She is also provided with a caudal appendage that ends in a patent fly-brush. This she uses to wrap around the neck of the milkmaid to prevent her getting away before she has a chance to kick her health corset off ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Already the opposite house line had been broken near the center by a high apartment building, and another still higher rose like a cliff just back of the house in which Roger lived. Still others, and many factory lofts, reared shadowy bulks on every hand. From the top of one an enormous sign, a corset pictured forth in lights, flashed out at regular intervals; and from farther off, high up in the misty haze of the night, could be seen the gleaming pinnacle where hour by hour that great bell slowly boomed the time away. Yes, here the old was passing. Already the tiny parklet ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... for mine," said Pete Murphy, "at night—all the corset and whisky signs flashing, the streets jammed with benzine-buggies, the sidewalks crowded with boobs, and every lobster palace filled to the roof with ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... : kupro. copy : kopii; ekzemplero. coral : koralo. cord : sxnuro. core : korajxo, internajxo. cork : korko; sxtopi, corn : greno; (foot), kalo. corner : angulo. correct : korekti; gxusta, senerara. correspond : korespondi. corrode : mordeti. corset : korseto. costume : kostumo. cotton : (raw), kotono; (manuf.) katuno. cough : tusi. council : konsilantaro. count : kalkuli; grafo. country : lando; kamparo. courage : kuragxo. course : kuro; kurso. "of"—, kompreneble. court : korto, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... economy for you. The girls in a corset factory in Newark, New Jersey, if not inside when the whistle stopped blowing (at seven o'clock apparently) were locked out till half-past seven, and then they were docked ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... said the newcomer, panting from the climb upstairs, and turning a cold, fresh-colored cheek for Susan's kiss. She took off a long coat, displaying beneath, a black walking- skirt, an elaborate high collar, and a view of shabby corset and shabby corset-cover between. "Ma wanted butter," she explained, with a pleasant, rueful smile, "and I just slipped into ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... stern piety, had resigned his office to his son and died in the "angelica vestis" of the tertiary order; and the "beatified" Duchess who had sold her jewels to buy corn for the poor during the famine of 1670, and had worn a hair-shirt under a corset that seemed stiff enough to serve all the purposes of bodily mortification. So the file descended, the colours fading, the shadows deepening, till it reached a baby porporato of the last century, who had donned the cardinal's habit at four, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... at her handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin did to make his hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved. She put on new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset straight, without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of having a new gown, well made, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... perfection in sculptural art. If living women would consent to remain beautiful, instead of being slaves to fashion, it would be much better for themselves and for the race. A corseted woman can not breathe properly, even if she can introduce her hand between the body and her corset to prove that she is not constricted. The natural curves of women are more graceful than those produced by the corset. It would be an easy matter to give the breasts sufficient support, if they need support, without constricting the body, and then take enough exercise to keep the waist and ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... cross-arm like the halberd commonly used in China from the seventh century before Christ. Yamato armour affords little assistance to the archaeologist: it bears no particularly close resemblance to any type familiar elsewhere. There was a corset made of sheet iron, well rivetted. It fastened in front and was much higher behind than before, additioned protection for the back being provided by a lattice-guard which depended from the helmet and was made by fastening strips ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... obliterated every sign of sex and made it impossible to image the existence of a fleshy reality beneath the bulk of cloth. Rows of filigree buttons glittered on the cuffs of her jacket; on her breast, crushed flat by a monastic corset which seemed made of iron, shone a triple chain of gold with its enormous links; from beneath the kerchief worn on the head hung her heavy braids tied with ribbons. On the bench, serving as a cushion for her voluminous ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... unmarried woman," states that worthy work, baldly, "especially when no longer young." That, to the world, was Sophy Decker. Unmarried, certainly. And most certainly no longer young. In figure she was, at fifty, what is known in the corset ads as a "stylish stout." Well dressed in blue serge, with broad-toed health shoes and a small, astute hat. The blue serge was practical common sense. The health shoes were comfort. The hat was strictly business. Sophy Decker made and sold hats, both astute and ingenuous, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... on my hat and bolted out to see the first dealer I could find; and there I had the incredible details. Neave had come into a fortune—two or three million dollars, amassed by an uncle who had a corset-factory, and who had attained wealth as the creator of the Mystic Super-straight. (Corset-factory sounds odd, by the way, doesn't it? One had fancied that the corset was a personal, a highly specialized garment, more or less shaped on the form ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet's nest and half of an old corset-cover. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... to her that what she is doing is wicked and will get that kind of "results." Similarly those of 'em who had not yet taken off their corsets at dances, promptly did so when shocked elders began repeating the corset checking story. Dear heart, the only reason that they had not done so before was because the little dears hadn't heard that the worst people were using ribs instead of ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... and graceful figure, unspoiled by corset or by long, wearisome hours of confinement at the school-bench; it was lithe and well-proportioned as one of Diana's nymphs; but instead, she arranged her golden tresses, and decked her head with a wreath of wild-flowers, bending over a small mountain lake, which she had appropriated to ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... one day one of her ladies, whom she had caused to be sent for, found, on entering the room, to her great astonishment, Cardinal Fesch discharging the duty of a lady's maid by lacing up his sister, who had on only her underclothing and her corset. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig on—and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest—and which really ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to find Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind And be safe in my corset-lacing. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... their own homes, the lessons given should be limited to sewing by hand. In some schools, it may be necessary to simplify the lessons; in others, an increased number of articles may be prepared in the time allotted. Should the apron and cap not be needed for the cooking class, an undergarment (corset cover) may well ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... And the corset which mother held in her hand was sent flying up the stairs after the boy, who in three jumps was gone and up above. The others lay laughing in bed when Bertje told them that he had seen Horieneke all in white, with a bunch ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... unbeautiful toilet. In the same small wheeled hotel capitalists, statesmen, matrons, and misses were dressing in quarters just as strait. Jake and his wife had always got in each other's way, but never more cumbersomely than now. Jake found his wife's stockings when he sought his socks. Her corset-strings seemed to be everywhere. Whatever he laid hold of brought along her corset. He thrust his head and arms into something white and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the landing in front of her bedroom door as the housemaid conducted me aloft. Making due allowance for the youth-and-beauty-destroying effects of the kimono, curling "kids," and cold cream, and substituting in their stead a snug corset, an undulated pompadour, and a powdered countenance, respectively, I knew about what to look for in the daylight Miss Jamison. A short, plump, blonde lady in the middle forties, I predicted to myself. The secretary of the Young Women's Christian Association, to which I had written some ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... in your eyes," says Nikolay Timofeitch in dismay. "What's that for? Come to the corset department, I'll screen ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was badly cut. Instead of holding himself upright with an elastic corset, he felt that he was cooped up inside a hideous shirt-collar; he hung his dejected head without resistance on the part of a limp cravat. What woman could guess that a handsome foot was hidden by the clumsy boots which he had brought from Angouleme? What young man could ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... feasting presence made of light"—her hair like a golden wheat sheaf, her eyes like blue flowers amid the wheat, and her bosom, by no means parsimoniously concealed, literally suggesting that the loveliness of all the water lilies in the world was amassed there within her corset as in some precious casket. Ours was not one of the great tragic loves, but I know I shall think of Aurea's bosom on my death-bed. At her coming I had ordered champagne—we always drank champagne together, because, as we said, it matched ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... that dreadful woman wear a corset?" demanded Mrs. Hilliard in a stage whisper of Ruth, whose face ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... During the last months of the pregnancy there is again frequent urination, because then the heavy uterus sinks again into the pelvic cavity and presses upon the bladder. The treatment for this frequent urination consists in wearing a well fitting abdominal belt or corset, which raises the uterus and prevents pressure on the bladder. Sometimes a pessary which prevents the anteversion is efficient. In all cases lying down and resting is useful. In short, keeping off one's feet is the most efficient remedy for the treatment ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... Even the hideous corset squeezing is counteracted by the power of complexion. Woman likes to look like a wasp, and if she could she would move her poor system all out of place for the sake of ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... offered the sum of twelve hundred and fifty dollars for the machine which Amasa Howe had brought with him, and agreed to pay Elias fifteen dollars per week if he would enter his service, and adapt the machine to his business of umbrella and corset making. As this was his only hope of earning a livelihood, Elias accepted the offer, and, upon his brother's return to the United States, sailed for England. He remained in Mr. Thomas's employ for about eight months, and at the end of that ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... bag that an attendant handed him Juve drew out the garments of the dead woman. The shoes were by a good maker, the silk stockings with open-work embroidery, the chemise and the drawers were of fine linen and the corset was well cut. ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... abating these evils, drawings are given (Fig. 62 and Fig. 63) of the front and back of a jacket that will preserve the advantages of the corset without its evils. This jacket may at first be fitted to the figure with corsets underneath it, just like the waist of a dress. Then, delicate whalebones can be used to stiffen the jacket, so that it will take the proper shape, when the corset ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... quickly doffed the blue jerkin that, girded round her waist, had given her such a sailor-like air, and disclosed a bust of such perfect symmetry, that it would have served as a model for a statue of Diana. And this was charmingly displayed in a sleeved corset of dark green color, cut after the fashion of a habit, with an incision in front, disclosing a stomacher of fine Spanish lace, set with rows of tiny brilliants. Her gauntlets quickly followed her jerkin, exposing tiny, swan white fingers, sparkling with jewels. And although herself unconscious of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... world. She will not place the corpses of cats or birds on her head. She will not wear mops at the bottom of her dress to sweep up the filth of the earth. She will not wear shoes that injure her as the heathen do. She will not put her body in the vice of a corset, displacing the organs of her body, unfitting her to be a mother, causing more than half the surgical operations in the hospitals. She will then discuss character more than fashion. She will be ashamed of her silly, giggling and meaningless ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... vessels, making them very liable to congestion. Tight clothing or improperly fitted clothing causes pressure and interferes with the circulation. I believe that a large percentage of the objections to the corset originated from women wearing improperly fitted corsets which pushed the organs out of place. A corset fitted to the wearer is not injurious and serves as a support. Overwork, catching cold and excesses may produce a congestion which is one stage of inflammation. The most common ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... decorated with the graceful ornaments worn by the ladies of this country! She was dressed in white muslin, lined with rose-coloured taffeta. Her small and elegant shape was displayed to advantage by her corset, and the lavish profusion of her light tresses were carelessly blended with her simple head-dress. Her fine blue eyes were filled with an expression of melancholy: and the struggles of passion, with which her heart was agitated, flushed her cheek, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... her. So I answered that we'd both had a narrow escape, because I'd been afraid for a year that I might wake up any morning and find myself the father-in-law of a Crystal Slipper chorus-girl. Then, as it looked as if the old lady was going to bust a corset-string in getting out her answer, I modestly slipped away, leaving her leaking brine and acid like a dill pickle that's had a bite ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... beyond the age of childbearing, her dress revealing the outlines of her corset, and she looked at me coldly through rimless glassing biting the bridge of her inadequate ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... harmonious outlines of the figure to advantage, thanks to the large openings in the overcoat. The surcoat, kept back on the shoulders by two narrow bands, became a sort of wide and trailing skirt, which majestically draped the lower part of the body; and, lastly, the external corset was invented, which was a kind of short mantle, falling down before and behind without concealing any of the fine outlines of the bust. This new article of apparel, which was kept in its place in the middle of the chest by a steel busk ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... blamed you: I'd have done the same only for Margaret. Too much straightlacedness narrows a man's mind. Talking of that, what about those hygienic corset advertisements that Vines & Jackson want us to put in the window? I told Vines they werent decent and we couldnt shew them in our shop. I was pretty high with him. But what am I to say to him now if he comes and throws this business ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... hatchings of things domestic, tended whole byrefuls of cows, handled suckling lambs with dead mothers lying up on the hill—aye, played the surgeon even to robins with broken legs, for one of which she constructed a leg capable of being strapped on, made it out of the whalebone of an old corset of her own for which she had grown ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... omit any or all of these embellishments, she presented herself to the eyes of her family and friends with a genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of all her days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing, manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and her corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her appearance was long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain, nor was she particularly well satisfied with herself when it was done. That about one-fifth of her waking time—something more than two months out of the year—was spent in an unprofitable ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... an opportune time to demonstrate to what extent serious results may follow mistakes in dressing. The habit of permitting growing girls to constrict the waist, to bind and pull the abdomen by too tight garters, or too tight corset, is wrong, and no mother should permit it. In another part of the book, this matter is taken up more fully, but if it is explained to the girl while she is considering the subject of menstruation, she may more quickly and more fully appreciate ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... sublimated than the exquisite of the nineteenth century. The dandy is of modern date; but there is some polish on him—suppose it be on his boots alone. Shape and make are attended to by him; witness the Cumberland corset, and his making what he can of every body. Then, again, he must have a smattering of French, and affect to be above old England. When he smokes, he does it from vanity, to show his ecume de mer pipe. He may have a gold snuff-box ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Madame Piriac by sheer hazard in a corset shop in the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin. The fugitive from justice had been obliged, in the matter of wardrobe, to begin life again on her arrival trunkless in Paris, and the business of doing so was not disagreeable. Madame Piriac had greeted her with most affectionate ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... women were displaying themselves in lumps and creases and billows and sections that rolled like the untrammelled waves of the sea. Her own figure was so firmly molded and so erect and supple that it was, for all her fashionable clothes, quite independent of the corset. She had charming manners combined with an imperturbable serenity, and always seemed faintly amused. On the other hand, she displayed none of the ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... of knowledge, and improved treatment of specific ailments. The danger is apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, who has only one hobby and traces every human ill to strong liquor or tobacco, or the corset, or taxation of personal property, or denial of universal suffrage, or the eating of meat, or the want of the centralization of nearly all initiative and interest and property in the state. The tendency of the accomplished specialist in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and that 'they seem to have been dictated to a plain woman of genius by the ghost of David Hume.' Herself, too, has been variously described: as 'An Apotheosis of Pupil-Teachery'; as 'George Sand plus Science and minus Sex'; as 'Pallas with prejudices and a corset'; as 'the fruit of a caprice of Apollo for the Differential Calculus.' The comparison of her admirable talent to 'not the imperial violin but the grand ducal violoncello' seems suggestive ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... ear-splitting music. Next to him came a personage bearing the insignia—I suppose we must term it—of the brigade. This affair reminded me of nothing at home so much as the stall or stand of the itinerant vendor of boot and corset laces in our streets, the laces in this case being represented by strips of gilded leather, and surmounted by a ball, on which was traced a great character in gold, signifying fire, in the language of the children of the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... corset for her, for the same purpose as the King's under-waistcoat, without her knowledge; but she would not make use of it; all my entreaties, all my tears, were in vain. "If the factions assassinate me," she replied, "it will be a fortunate event for me; they will deliver me from ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... foolish in this jail, I think, Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink. She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid Will not scorn with me this jail-bird trade, Pets some fox-eyed boy who turns the trick, Tho' he win a button or a stick, Pencil, garter, ribbon, corset-lace— HIS the glory, MINE ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... lady-in-waiting, hurried into her toilet-chamber in advance of her lady-in-waiting, who followed, sighing and shaking her head, and endeavored with her own hands to loosen the stiff corset of her robe, and to free herself from the immense crinoline which imprisoned ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... than any man living. I went by train to see a friend in the country, and after passing through a patent mucilage, some more hams, a South African Investment Company, a Parisian millinery firm, and a comic journal, I alighted at a new and original kind of corset. On my return journey the road almost continuously ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... heavily laden lumber wagon, drawn by straining horses, creaked down the street. They concentrated their fire upon the driver by tacit consent, for each of the marksmen had had an aversion to causing runaways drilled into him by the hair brush or corset ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... study—co-education—which, it is said, compels overwork that the girl student may keep up with the young men of her class; too much exercise, or lack of rest and quiet at certain periods when nature demands it. All the while the physician is silent concerning the glove-fitting, steel-clasped corset, the heavy, dragging skirts, the bands engirding the body, the pinching, deforming boot, and the ruinous social dissipation of fashionable society. These will account for much of the feebleness of young women and girls. For they exhaust nervous ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... was a large party, both Portuguese and English, at the consul's. In the well-dressed women I saw to-night, I had great difficulty in recognising the slatterns of the other morning. The senhoras were all dressed after the French fashion: corset, fichu, garniture, all was proper, and even elegant, and there was a great display of jewels. Our English ladies, though quite of the second rate of even colonial gentility, however, bore away the prize of beauty and grace; for after all, the clothes, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... her silken robe, And bind her locks with pearls, And one may wreathe the woodland rose Among her floating curls; And one may tread the dewy grass, And one the marble floor, Nor half-hid bosom heave the less, Nor broidered corset more! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one point, the conversation suddenly took a peculiar turn. It came about through Mrs. Dawes mentioning that her aunt, who died from eating tinned lobster, used to work in a corset shop in Wych Street. When she said that, The Agent, whose right eye appeared to survey the ceiling, whilst his left eye looked over the other ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... for her sex but for her sanity: her letter is extremely sensible. She makes two points: that high heels are a necessity for any lady who wishes to keep her dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets, and that without a tight corset 'the ordinary number of petticoats and etceteras' cannot be properly or conveniently held up. Now, it is quite true that as long as the lower garments are suspended from the hips a corset is an absolute necessity; the mistake lies in not suspending all apparel ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... lately," he continued, "to observe the powerful tonic effect of clothes. A woman patient told me once that the moral support, afforded by a well-fitting corset was inconceivable to the mind of a mere man. She said that a corset is to a woman what a hat is to a man— it prepares for any emergency, enables one to meet life on equal terms, and even to face a rebellious cook or janitor with 'that repose which ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... a man hides his wive's corset and petticoat, it is governin' without the "consent of the governed." And if you don't believe it, you ort to have peeked round them barrells, and seen Abagail's eyes. Why, they had hull reams of by-laws in 'em, and preambles, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of corsets meets the strong disapproval of all Delsarteans, as "control of the breath underlies gesture, walk and voice," and a tightened corset-lace necessarily cramps the breathing power. The tight, high collar is also objectionable for the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... whose long black lashes threw their shadows on the transparent whiteness of her cheeks. Over her neck and breast of ivory flowed the golden waves of her magnificent hair, which had come down at the time of her fall. When, as they unlaced her satin corset, less soft, less fresh, less white than the virgin form beneath, which lay like a statue of alabaster in its covering of lace and lawn, one of the horrible hags felt the arms and shoulders of the young girl with her large, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... away with the wappatoo roots under the beds. The dress of the men was like that of the people above; but the women were clad in a peculiar manner, the robe not reaching lower than the hip, and the body being covered in cold weather by a sort of corset of fur, curiously plaited, and reaching from the arms to the hip: added to this was a sort of petticoat, or, rather, tissue of white cedar bark, bruised or broken into small strands and woven into a girdle by several cords of the same material. Being tied round ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... horrid hole I don't want to go back, and if you'll take me home to Pop, I know he won't let me go back, and he'll pay you real handsome besides.'—'Who's your Pop?' says I.—'He's Mr. Groppeltacker, of Groppeltacker & Mintz, corset findings, seven hundred and something or other, I forget the number now, Broadway. Oh, Pop does a lot of business, I tell you, and he's got lots of money. He sends corset findings to South America, and Paris, and Chicago, ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that woman,—who knows that stays will bend,—seizes her corset by the lower end, and bends ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... cast our nets into the water we caught sturgeon, and a very extraordinary kind of fish. It resembles the trout, with this difference, that its mouth is larger. Near its nose—which is smaller, as are also the eyes—is a large bone, shaped like a woman's corset-bone, three fingers wide and a cubit long, at the end of which is a disk as wide as one's hand. This frequently causes it to fall backward when it leaps out of the water." This was the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hundreds of pupils each year, she is the greatest since Carrienta. But I must have first right to her. You hear, first right! I will teach her free of charge. Leave your name and address with my secretary as you go out. Send her Monday at four. Loose clothing. Not even corset waists. Good afternoon. Good-by—Zoe"—placing his hands on her curls ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... downfall of her kingdom she had accorded it to greater than Lydia French. Lydia's breath came so fast now that it hurt her. She stepped forward, but she did not take the low chair which really had quite a comfortable area left beyond Madame Beattie's corset and stockings. She stood there in the circle ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... world generally, the medical profession included, held the opinion that there is a fundamental difference between men and women in breathing. Observation of the natural breathing of boys and girls would soon prove the absurdity of this opinion. Owing to the universal use of the corset, thoracic breathing, or chest breathing, the result of the artificial constriction of the body at and below the waist line, appeared to be the natural method of breathing for women, whereas diaphragmatic breathing was recognized ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... patron. All except one paper, of the most thrilling importance, which never left her person. This small, unobtrusive paper, upon which, according to Madame, the destinies of nations depended, was hidden always—happy paper—in the bosom of her corset. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... sly as foxes. Father said I'd break him if I didn't stop making blunders in giving change—he wasn't in the prize-candy business, and couldn't afford to have me give twenty-five sheets of note paper, a box of pens, six corset laces, a bunch of whalebones, and two dollars and fifty cents change for a ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... Hattie's arms and thighs were granite to the touch and to the scales. Kindly freckled granite. She weighed almost twice what she looked. Marcia, whose hips were like lyres, hated the ridge above the corset line and massaged it. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... queerly and keeps moving on like a tramp in front of a policeman till you've started being gray and taking off your corset every time you're alone because you like being comfortable better than having a waist-line—and you've never had anything to settle you," her face twitched, "not children—nor even the security of marriage—nothing but work that only interests ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... squire; gals, spread yeourselves areound and squat; take care o' yeour corset strings, and keep deth-ly still. Wall; neow, yeou all sot? Hain't none o' ye been in the pedlin' business, I guess; wall, no matter, tho' it's dread-ful pleasant sometimes: then again at ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... white linen petticoat wid tuckers at de hem, just a little long, to show good and white 'long wid de blue of de skirt and de red of de underskirt. Dese all come up to my waist and was held together by de string dat held my bustle in place. All dis and my corset was hid by de snow white pleated pique bodice, dat drapped gracefully from my shoulders. 'Round my neck was a string of green jade beads. I wore red stockin's and my foots was stuck in soft, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... want me to leave. I wouldn't tell her why. She said, 'I speck you going to get married.' She gave me a nice white silk dress. Mrs. Drennand made it. My owner, Miss Leila Nash, lend me one of her chemisette, a corset cover, and a dress had ruffles around the bottom. It was wide. She never married. I borrowed my veil from a colored woman that had used it. Mr. Rollwage (dead now but was a lawyer at Forrest City) gave Scott a tie and white vest and lend him his watch ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... arrival in France his comrade called him only Mademoiselle Fifi. This nickname was bestowed upon him on account of his coquettish style of dressing and manners, his slender waist, which looked as if it were laced in a corset, his pale face on which a nascent mustache could hardly be seen, and also on account of the habit he had acquired, in order to express his supreme contempt for persons and things, of using continually the French locution: "Fi! ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... shoulders," said Miss Coleman, smiling; "they'll take care of themselves if you keep your head right. Practise sitting and standing erect. And never wear a corset. If the Almighty had meant woman to be corset-shaped, He'd have ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Mattie lying upon the ground. She had walked in the sun and had started to run and had fallen over some stumps. Instantly they saw that she had been prostrated by the heat, and having recently studied "First aid to the injured" they proceeded to remove her blouse and open her corset, when lo! there upon a silver chain around her neck was not only Ethel Hollister's ring but another belonging to Honora Casey. She had missed it a few days after Ethel had lost hers, but she wisely refrained ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... provisions or to fetch her work, Madame de la Chanterie contrived to get along, thanks to a hundred francs which her father-in-law, touched by her goodness, sent to her once a month. Nevertheless, foreseeing that that resource might fail her, the poor young woman had taken up the hard and toilsome work of corset-making in the service of a celebrated dressmaker. This precaution proved a wise one. The father died, and his property was obtained by the son (the old monarchical laws of entail being then overthrown) and speedily dissipated by him. The ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... brave that was most monstrous in misorder." For women the fashion of decollete was just coming in, as so many fashions do, from the demi-monde. To Catharine de' Medici is attributed the invention of the corset, an atrocity to be excused only by her own urgent need ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... here it is—no, here— "Kiss them. Eustacia hung her head; Whereat he said, 'Eustacia dear'— And sweetly low Eustacia said:" (Continued on page 17.) Here, just between the corset ad. And that of Smithers' Canderine. (Eustacia ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... modern man in the degree in which it argues exemption from labor; it also adds a peculiar and highly characteristic feature which differs in kind from anything habitually practiced by the men. This feature is the class of contrivances of which the corset is the typical example. The corset is, in economic theory, substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitality and rendering her permanently and obviously unfit for work. It is true, the corset impairs the personal attractions of the wearer, but ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... returns for the whole State, and the commissioner therefore limited his inquiry to a thorough investigation of the working-women of San Francisco, in number about twenty thousand. The State has but one cotton-mill, but there are silk, jute, woollen, corset, and shirt factories, with many minor industries. Home and general sanitary conditions were all investigated, the bureau following the ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... anything," said Mr. Marrier. "Very good amateur actress. Goes about a great deal. Her mother was on the stage. Married a wealthy wholesale corset-maker." ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... arrived several spruce ladies, one of whom was reported to be his wife, but opinions varied as to which of the eight possessed this honour. These demoiselles were expert dressmakers, and plied many other trades necessary for the beautifying of court ladies. A French corset-maker appeared on the scene, and a famous vender of cosmetics. In fact, there were not wanting all the elements which must ever be at hand for serving the whimsies and necessities of noble dames. The titles of these court purveyors were in the Landhofmeisterin's keeping, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... he, as she rose to depart. "Why so hurried? Let us see. Take of the wrap. Step behind the screen and loosen your corset. Perhaps even you ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Madame Arconati, has shown me generous love; a Contadina, whom I have known this summer, hardly less. Every Sunday she came in her holiday dress, a beautiful corset of red silk, richly embroidered, rich petticoat, nice shoes and stockings, and handsome coral necklace, on one arm an immense basket of grapes, on the other a pair of live chickens to be eaten by me for her sake ("per amore mio"), and wanted no present, no reward: ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... stout, jolly-looking woman, and she was standing at the corset counter, holding in her hand an article she was returning. Evidently her attention had been suddenly drawn to the legend printed on the label, for she was overheard to murmur, "'Made expressly for John Wanamaker.' Well, there! No ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... and the loud rattling of the windows, what a charming sensation it is to see your pretty neighbor open her eyes, startled, glance around her, arrange her rebellious hair with her slender fingers, adjust her hat, feel with sure hand whether her corset is still in place, her waist straight, and her skirt not ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the Ocean for other seas, for other lands. The walled garden full of shadows blazed with colour as if the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during the day. The amazing old woman became very explicit. She suggested to the girl a corset and a petticoat with a cynical unreserve which humiliated me. Was I of no more account than a wooden dummy? The girl snapped ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and the worshipper of motherhood. It is highly desirable that, in physical training to-day, attention should be paid to the development of the abdominal muscles. Holding the abdomen together by means of a corset may serve its own purpose, but does less than nothing in the crisis of motherhood. The corset indeed conduces to the atrophy of the most important of all the voluntary muscles for the most important crisis of a woman's life. "Some ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... The screen vanishes: and a dainty room with a bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing-table with a mirror and a switch on it, appears. Seated at it a handsome negress is trying on a brilliant head scarf. Her dressing-gown is thrown back from her shoulders to her chair. She is in corset, knickers, and ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... scholiast thinks that Cinesias, who was tall and slight of build, wore a kind of corset of lime-wood to support his ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... came from divers places—the window sill, the top bureau drawer, the closet shelf. Beer and sardines were its chief features, with black olives soaked in oil and garlic, cheese straws taken from a corset box, and ripe figs oozing through their ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... origin of the corset is lost in remote antiquity. The figures of the early Egyptian women show clearly an artificial shape of the waist produced by some style of corset. A similar style of dress must also have prevailed among the ancient Jewish maidens; for Isaiah, in calling upon the women to put ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... dressed enough for any emergency. I think a house gown of pretty material much neater than the kimono. Be sure this fits about the shoulders, and never have loose flowing sleeves. A white frill in the neck looks very trim, and is always becoming. The corset and all tight clothes should be removed, stockings and underwear kept on. The hair should be arranged simply, but not allowed to hang in a loose braid, unless you are very sure you will not see any but the patient, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... of the ceremony, and of Mme. Lyautey's visit, they had put on their finest clothes, and their freedom of movement was somewhat hampered by their narrow sumptuous gowns, with over-draperies of gold and silver brocade and pale rosy gauze held in by corset-like sashes of gold tissue of Fez, and the heavy silken cords that looped their voluminous sleeves. Above their foreheads the hair was shaven like that of an Italian fourteenth-century beauty, and only a black line as narrow as a pencilled eyebrow showed through the twist of gauze fastened ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... among the rib cages, sat atop crania, scuttled behind shin-bones. Brett picked his way, stepping over imitation pearl necklaces, zircon rings, plastic buttons, hearing aids, lipsticks, compacts, corset stays, prosthetic devices, rubber heels, wrist watches, lapel watches, pocket watches with corroded ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... English papers, after dinner went and sat three hours with Mr. Scholfield; found him less altered than most of my old acquaintances, he lives with his daughter who is married to a Londoner, named Patten, and carries on the stay or corset business. Mr. S. a very sensible man greatly opposed to Jackson; has some little municipal office; well acquainted with the Crooks, Mrs. Marsden, and others. Had tea with the Masons, and had a good deal of talk about old matters in England. ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... him remain seated near her by the fire, until twelve o'clock at night, singing soft refrains, and at every opportunity showed her fair shoulders, and the white temptations of which her corset was full, and casting upon him a thousand piercing glances, all without showing in her face the thoughts that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... of this invention is to furnish an improved abdominal corset, which supports the weight of the abdomen in a perfectly comfortable and easy manner, and throws the strain on the shoulders and hips of the wearer. The corset is adjustable to the varying conditions of the abdomen, does not interfere with the motion and different ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... doing? One would think you had never seen a corset before. Don't fumble! If you fumble, I shall pack you off to Paris by the first train to-morrow morning. Now where's ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... styles of dress invented by the wicked leaders of fashion in London and Paris, whence the latest styles of this country generally emanate. It is indeed sad to behold the young of to-day making themselves unfit to fulfil the sacred functions of wife and mother by the use of the modern corset, as well as laying a foundation for years of misery, dragged out in this life by diseases brought upon them by catering to the creed of millions who worship at the shrine of Fashion. The pride of their ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... in France his comrade called him only Mademoiselle Fifi. This nickname was bestowed upon him on account of his coquettish style of dressing and manners, his slender waist, which looked as if it were laced in a corset, his pale face on which a nascent mustache could hardly be seen, and also on account of the habit he had acquired, in order to express his supreme contempt for persons and things, of using continually the French ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... some of her clothes and after P got to snoring we put them in Pa's room. O, you'd a laffed. We put a pair of number one slippers with blue stockings, down in front of the rocking chair, beside Pa's boots, and a red corset on a chair, and my chum's sister's best black silk dress on another chair, and a hat with a white feather on, on the bureau, and some frizzes on the gas bracket, and everything we could find that belonged to a girl in my ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... any or all of these embellishments, she presented herself to the eyes of her family and friends with a genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of all her days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing, manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and her corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her appearance was long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain, nor was she particularly well satisfied with herself when it was done. That about one-fifth of her waking time—something more than two months out of ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... she had caused to be sent for, found, on entering the room, to her great astonishment, Cardinal Fesch discharging the duty of a lady's maid by lacing up his sister, who had on only her underclothing and her corset. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... had formerly put into the house. She was determined that her cousin should be as well dressed as Madame Garceland's little girl. She bought the child fashionable boots of bronzed kid like those the little Tiphaines wore, very fine cotton stockings, a corset by the best maker, a dress of blue reps, a pretty cape lined with white silk,—all this that she, Sylvie, might hold her own against the children of the women who had rejected her. The underclothes were quite in keeping with the visible articles of dress, for Sylvie ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... been broken near the center by a high apartment building, and another still higher rose like a cliff just back of the house in which Roger lived. Still others, and many factory lofts, reared shadowy bulks on every hand. From the top of one an enormous sign, a corset pictured forth in lights, flashed out at regular intervals; and from farther off, high up in the misty haze of the night, could be seen the gleaming pinnacle where hour by hour that great bell slowly boomed the time away. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... stepped back, spoke to Ma Pettengill of the day's promise, and seemed carelessly to forget what I was there for. Slowly Dandy Jim deflated himself; and then, on the fair and just instant, I pulled. I pulled hard and long. The game was won. Dandy Jim had now the waist of that matron wearing the Sveltina corset, over in the part of the magazine where the stories die away. I fearlessly bestrode him ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... were admitted to the ranks of the agitators. The initial revolt was thoroughgoing. They discarded the corset, discarded it when it was still improper to speak the word! They cut off their hair, cut it off in a day when every woman owned a chignon. They discarded the corset, cut off their hair, and ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... beholder's eye Your late denuded bindings lie, Subsiding slowly where they fell, A disinvested citadel; The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe, The Dutchman's breeches frilled below. Those that the lover notes to note, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it was a small package, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with ribbon. She opened it carefully, with the deep gravity and circumstance of a priest before an altar. Appeared a little red-satin Spanish girdle, whale-boned like a tiny corset, pointed, the pioneer finery of a frontier woman who had crossed the plains. It was hand-made after the California-Spanish model of forgotten days. The very whalebone had been home-shaped of the raw material from the whaleships traded for in hides ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... punishments alone. They are eternally tempted to folly, yet snubbed the moment they would be wise. A million shops spread their nets, and entice them by their direst foible. Their very mothers—for want of medical knowledge in the sex—clasp the fatal, idiotic corset on their growing bodies, though thin as a lath. So the girl grows up, crippled in the ribs and lungs by her own mother; and her life, too, is in stays—cabined, cribbed, confined: unless she can paint, or act, or write novels, every path of honorable ambition is closed to her. We treat ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the newcomer, panting from the climb upstairs, and turning a cold, fresh-colored cheek for Susan's kiss. She took off a long coat, displaying beneath, a black walking- skirt, an elaborate high collar, and a view of shabby corset and shabby corset-cover between. "Ma wanted butter," she explained, with a pleasant, rueful smile, "and I just slipped into ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... sent to Brussels to finish her education; she is of middle size, stiffly made, body long, legs short, bust much developed but not compactly moulded, waist disproportionately compressed by an inhumanly braced corset, dress carefully arranged, large feet tortured into small bottines, head small, hair smoothed, braided, oiled, and gummed to perfection; very low forehead, very diminutive and vindictive grey eyes, somewhat Tartar features, rather ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the charm of her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen this he could not help being aware of it, just as we cannot renew an illusion ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... new generation; parents who believe that to play cards or go to theater is the way of Satan find their children leaving home to do these very things. Everywhere mothers wonder why daughters like short skirts, powder and perhaps rouge, when they were brought up on the corset, crinoline and the bustle; and they rebel against the indictment passed out broadcast by their children. "You are old-fashioned; this is the year 1921." When children grow up, their wills clash with ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... said Mr. Marrier. "Very good amateur actress. Goes about a great deal. Her mother was on the stage. Married a wealthy wholesale corset-maker." ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... his vest—what they wanted called his waistcoat—was as tight as a corset. He felt that he would be safer in bed. He'd better go up to his own room and stretch out. He rose with extraordinary difficulty and negotiated a ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... over a white linen petticoat wid tuckers at de hem, just a little long, to show good and white 'long wid de blue of de skirt and de red of de underskirt. Dese all come up to my waist and was held together by de string dat held my bustle in place. All dis and my corset was hid by de snow white pleated pique bodice, dat drapped gracefully from my shoulders. 'Round my neck was a string of green jade beads. I wore red stockin's and my foots was stuck in soft, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... beds. The dress of the men was like that of the people above; but the women were clad in a peculiar manner, the robe not reaching lower than the hip, and the body being covered in cold weather by a sort of corset of fur, curiously plaited, and reaching from the arms to the hip: added to this was a sort of petticoat, or, rather, tissue of white cedar bark, bruised or broken into small strands and woven into a girdle by several cords of the same material. Being tied round the middle, these strands ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... better, and when she has to confess that she has never done anything outside of her own house, and nothing there except agreeable things, such as entertaining friends who next week will entertain her, and embroidering 'insets' for corset-covers for dainty ladies who already have corset-covers enough to fill a store-window,—I wonder if she will be able to put it over on the heavenly doorkeeper that 'the Doctor would not let her.' If all I hear is true, Saint Peter will say, 'Who is this person ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... would think you had never seen a corset before. Don't fumble! If you fumble, I shall pack you off to Paris by the first train to-morrow morning. Now ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... puffs, the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegant edifices of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or decoration for him. The corset—half the time it is a corset of a reparative kind—lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to take it away with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk protections round the sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a coiffeur, all the false woman is there, scattered about ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... open, and gives me a prospect into that of Mad. de L, which is on the opposite side of the passage. She has not yet put on her cap, but her grey hair is profusely powdered; and, with no other garments than a short under petticoat and a corset, she stands for the edification of all who pass, putting on her rouge with a stick and a bundle of cotton tied to the end of it.—All travellers agree in describing great indelicacy to the French women; yet I have seen no accounts which exaggerate ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... device did not so much 'finish off' the neck of Mrs. Fox-Moore's gowns, as allow the funereal dulness of them to overflow on to her brown neck. It even cast an added shadow on her sallow cheek. The figure of the older woman, gaunt and thin enough, announced the further constriction of the corset. By way of revenge the sharp shoulder-blades poked the corset out till it defined a ridge in the black silk back. In front, too, the slab-like figure declined co-operation with the corset, and withdrew, leaving a hiatus that the silk bodice ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... with Elly Precious. We're goin' to blind her an' lead her in an' count one—two—look! She'll see the cake the very quickest thing! She won't cut off an inch o' the stems, so they're kind of tall up 'n' down, you see. I mean the roses. I've put a corset steel o' Mother's in an' kind of tied 'em to it. I hope you don't see ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... comparable to the joy of taking in your clothes, I have not experienced it. And when you find your corset coming closer and closer together (I advise a front lace, so this can be watched), and then the day you realize that you will have to stitch in a tuck or get a ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... cause of this modification of respiration is the change in dress which is usually made about that time. The young girl is now becoming a woman, and must acquire the art of lacing, wearing a corset, "stays," and sundry other contrivances by means of which to produce a "fine form" by distorting and destroying all natural grace and beauty ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... outlines of the figure to advantage, thanks to the large openings in the overcoat. The surcoat, kept back on the shoulders by two narrow bands, became a sort of wide and trailing skirt, which majestically draped the lower part of the body; and, lastly, the external corset was invented, which was a kind of short mantle, falling down before and behind without concealing any of the fine outlines of the bust. This new article of apparel, which was kept in its place in the middle of the chest by a steel busk encased in some rich ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... had. From all that Harry tells me, I judge what with hunting up fashions and fabrics and corset-makers and all the rest of it, you have done the work, daily, ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... got all this done systematically when my little French friend—I call her Mile. Henriette now—came to the door to say that she simply "could not stand another day of it." She had put, she said, all the ready money they had inside her corset, and a little box which contained all her dead father's decorations also, and she was ready to go. She took out the box and showed the pretty jeweled things,—his cross of the Legion d'Honneur, his Papal decoration, and several foreign orders,—her father, ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... abdomen." Such a condition can be prevented by the use of several appliances, and the device best suited to the case should be chosen. Those who have never become accustomed to corsets will probably find a corset-waist or an abdominal supporter the most comfortable and useful. But the average young woman who has previously employed a sensible, well made, and loosely fitting corset need make no change until the third or fourth month of pregnancy. From then on she ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... held the opinion that there is a fundamental difference between men and women in breathing. Observation of the natural breathing of boys and girls would soon prove the absurdity of this opinion. Owing to the universal use of the corset, thoracic breathing, or chest breathing, the result of the artificial constriction of the body at and below the waist line, appeared to be the natural method of breathing for women, whereas diaphragmatic breathing was recognized ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... fact, she had received from it, on the 1st of January, 1836, a large collection of presents. There were in all no less than fifty-nine articles, among which were the following: a dress-box, a pair of boots, a thermometer, a carbine-carrier, a pair of trousers and a corset. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... a corset which she wore only once a week, walked along erect, with her squeezed-in waist, her broad shoulders and prominent hips, swinging herself a little. She wore a hat trimmed with flowers, made by a milliner at ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... you know? You 'cannot agree'! You have seen her when she is laced in her stage costume, when she prinks and prattles, with the paint, and the powder, and her best corset on. It is I who am 'behind the scenes,' mon ami, not you. I see her dirty peignoir and her curl rags. At four o'clock in the afternoon. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... her furs. Her skirt was of a plum colour so dark that it was almost black, the material thick and supple, outlining her figure, squeezing her arms, making an hourglass of her waist, accentuating the curve of her hips and the bulge of her corset. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in form, austere in colour; and in gloves of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Costa Rica and Nicaragua. One remarkable piece, of which a sketch is given in Fig. 50, c, is of large size and is shaped somewhat like an hour glass, and on account of its peculiar form and markings may be said to resemble a corset. The upper end is somewhat the smaller, and the septum, which forms the bottom of the vessel, is placed about an inch above the base of the foot. The interior surface is smoothly polished and painted a dark dull red. The exterior is uncolored and neatly fluted. The series of vertical ribs ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... she did everything as I desired, indeed, more, for she took off her petticoat and little corset, saying she would be cooler thus. So, following her example, I took off my trousers, saying she would be better able to see and play with my doodle. When these preliminaries were accomplished, I drew her on my knees—first pulling up her shift and my own shirt, so that our naked flesh ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... smiling amiably at his own boot-tip. "Did you ever hear of Mr. Adel Meyer's little corset steel which he invented to stick in the customs scales and rob the government for the profit of his Syrup Trust? Or of the individual oil refineries which mysteriously disappeared in fire and smoke ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... she said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up a loop of worn ribbon. "Straight front corset," she observed, flushing, "makes a nice pocket for almost everything." She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills. "Two hundred and twelve dollars," she said, proudly, "and eighty-three ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... to the doors, and the windows, and the clock, and then, waiting for the weary little figures to climb the stairs, would turn out the light, and, hairpins in one hand, corset in the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... some of the gowns was supported. In some instances there was no strap over the shoulders, the upper third of these alabaster torsos and arms being absolutely naked, save for a band of pearls, diamonds, or other gems, of a size rarely seen in the Orient; but I learned later that the bone or steel corset, which molds the form, constituted the support of the gown. I gradually became habituated to the custom, and did not notice it. My friend ——, an artist of repute, explained that it all depends on the point of view. "Our people are essentially artistic," ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie. You may talk about the value of a noble heart beating in an empty corset, shining out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable, where the good things in a woman's life are given in exchange. Janet Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that. And of the qualities ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... 'they seem to have been dictated to a plain woman of genius by the ghost of David Hume.' Herself, too, has been variously described: as 'An Apotheosis of Pupil-Teachery'; as 'George Sand plus Science and minus Sex'; as 'Pallas with prejudices and a corset'; as 'the fruit of a caprice of Apollo for the Differential Calculus.' The comparison of her admirable talent to 'not the imperial violin but the grand ducal violoncello' seems suggestive ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... just a little long, to show good and white 'long wid de blue of de skirt and de red of de underskirt. Dese all come up to my waist and was held together by de string dat held my bustle in place. All dis and my corset was hid by de snow white pleated pique bodice, dat drapped gracefully from my shoulders. 'Round my neck was a string of green jade beads. I wore red stockin's and my foots was stuck in soft, black, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... improved, when decorated with the graceful ornaments worn by the ladies of this country! She was dressed in white muslin, lined with rose-coloured taffeta. Her small and elegant shape was displayed to advantage by her corset, and the lavish profusion of her light tresses were carelessly blended with her simple head-dress. Her fine blue eyes were filled with an expression of melancholy: and the struggles of passion, with which her heart was agitated, flushed her cheek, and ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Arconati, has shown me generous love; a Contadina, whom I have known this summer, hardly less. Every Sunday she came in her holiday dress, a beautiful corset of red silk, richly embroidered, rich petticoat, nice shoes and stockings, and handsome coral necklace, on one arm an immense basket of grapes, on the other a pair of live chickens to be eaten by me for her sake ("per ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 'finish off' the neck of Mrs. Fox-Moore's gowns, as allow the funereal dulness of them to overflow on to her brown neck. It even cast an added shadow on her sallow cheek. The figure of the older woman, gaunt and thin enough, announced the further constriction of the corset. By way of revenge the sharp shoulder-blades poked the corset out till it defined a ridge in the black silk back. In front, too, the slab-like figure declined co-operation with the corset, and withdrew, leaving a hiatus that ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... again her full young figure, her well-shaped, well-poised head, and her regular features, and the pity of it seemed all the greater by reason thereof. He tried to visualize her perfectly groomed, clad in a smart gown molded over a well-fitting corset, with her feet properly shod and her hair dressed—but the task was beyond him. Probably she had never worn a corset, never seen a pair of silk stockings. He thought, too, of what was in store for her and wondered how she would fit into the new world she ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... tempted to folly, yet snubbed the moment they would be wise. A million shops spread their nets, and entice them by their direst foible. Their very mothers—for want of medical knowledge in the sex—clasp the fatal, idiotic corset on their growing bodies, though thin as a lath. So the girl grows up, crippled in the ribs and lungs by her own mother; and her life, too, is in stays—cabined, cribbed, confined: unless she can paint, or act, or write novels, every path of honorable ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... size? Is there no harmless potion or powder by which a city may lose a thousand inhabitants a day, as the superabounding fair loses a pound of beauty? Is there nothing for New York analogous to rolling on the floor, to the straight-front corset, to the sugarless, starchless diet? Come, you must not deny us all hope! How did Boston manage to remain so small? What elixirs, what exercises, did she take or use? Surely she did not do it all by reading and thinking!" Our friend continued somewhat ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... not very attractive subjects for the pencil. He forgot all—his graceful draping, his easy attitudes, his power of representing the passions. As to skilful grouping or dramatic effect in painting, all that was quite out of the question. He had nothing before his eyes but the eternal uniform, corset, or dress-coat—objects chilling to the artist, and affording little scope to imagination. By and by even the most ordinary merits disappeared, one by one, from his productions; and they still enjoyed the highest reputation, though real judges ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... tears trickled slowly from her closed eyes, whose long black lashes threw their shadows on the transparent whiteness of her cheeks. Over her neck and breast of ivory flowed the golden waves of her magnificent hair, which had come down at the time of her fall. When, as they unlaced her satin corset, less soft, less fresh, less white than the virgin form beneath, which lay like a statue of alabaster in its covering of lace and lawn, one of the horrible hags felt the arms and shoulders of the young girl with her large, red, horny, and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and mammy go by Millie. Both b'long to Marster Adam and Miss Nellie. Dat was her name and a lovely mistress she be in dat part of de country. Her was sure pretty, walk pretty, and act pretty. 'Bout all I had to do in slavery time was to comb her hair, lace her corset, pull de hem over her hoop and say, 'You is served, mistress!' Her lak them little words at ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... fact that the Forgotten Man is not infrequently a woman. I have before me a newspaper which contains five letters from corset-stitchers who complain that they cannot earn more than seventy-five cents a day with a machine, and that they have to provide the thread. The tax on the grade of thread used by them is prohibitory as to all importation, ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... into the water we caught sturgeon, and a very extraordinary kind of fish. It resembles the trout, with this difference, that its mouth is larger. Near its nose—which is smaller, as are also the eyes—is a large bone, shaped like a woman's corset-bone, three fingers wide and a cubit long, at the end of which is a disk as wide as one's hand. This frequently causes it to fall backward when it leaps out of the water." This was the paddle fish, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... before her lady-in-waiting, hurried into her toilet-chamber in advance of her lady-in-waiting, who followed, sighing and shaking her head, and endeavored with her own hands to loosen the stiff corset of her robe, and to free herself from the immense crinoline which imprisoned her ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... strange women had found themselves occupying the same room for a night they wouldn't have got to the kimono and back hair stage before they would not only have known each other's name, but they'd have tried on each other's hats, swapped corset cover patterns, found mutual friends living in Dayton, Ohio, taught each other a new Irish crochet stitch, showed their family photographs, told how their married sister's little girl nearly died with swollen glands, and divided off the mirror into two sections to paste ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... ordinary calico gown, but such was the impression left upon Renshaw's fancy that she seemed to wear it with a new grace. At any other time he might have recognized the change as due to a new corset, which strict veracity compels me to record Rosey had adopted for the first time that morning. Howbeit, her slight coquetry seemed to have passed, for she closed the open trunk with a return of her old listless air, and sitting on it rested her ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... going into the Temple house and showing Ned's wife how to do up her hair like mine. She looked like another woman when it was puffed softly over her forehead—she has quite pretty brown hair. Then I taught her how to put on her corset and pin her shirt-waist taut in front and her skirt behind. Ned was not to be home until late, and there was plenty of time. It ended in her fairly purring around me, and saying how sorry she was, and ashamed, that she had been so foolish, and all the ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... a maid ran to a doctor's office near by but did not find him; four other women employed in the house assisted mademoiselle to lift Germinie up and carry her to the bed in her mistress's room, on which they laid her after cutting her corset lacings. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... art doing fast, the ugly fashions of that London town, clumsy copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... get away, for he feared his mother's plaint for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills now sewed up in the buxom Leah's corset. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... satisfy a lady as to the fit of her stays, and this angry customer, whose name was Marie Mansel, gave her so shrewd a blow with her fist that the poor little dressmaker died in a week. The canons apparently so sympathised with the annoyances of a badly fitting corset, that they gave Marie Mansel her freedom. But the episode has its value in showing that the modern muscular female is not so new an apparition as she fancies. Tradesmen did not always get the worst of it, however, ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... paper that is used for the printing of our "greenbacks," to which further reference will be made later. In these exceptional mills everything is neat and perfectly clean, all the stock used being new and fresh from the cotton or linen mills, or from factories producing cloth goods, like shirt and corset factories, and others of the same sort. The sorting and shredding room is always large and light, with windows on all sides, and well ventilated, offering a decided contrast in many respects to the less cleanly ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... of silks. Their garments partake of the loose flowing order. For instance, a strong fabric of chosen shade is fastened at the neck, hip, knee and ankle, and lies carelessly over the parts between. The females never graduated to the corset degree, and while they do not cut a scientific figure, yet they surely develop a more ruddy waist after the model intended by the ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... almost anything within the power of human capacity, for girls have to study under all sorts of disadvantages that boys do not have to contend with. Hang a hoop-skirt on a boy's hips; lace him up in a corset; hang pounds of clothing and trailing skirts upon him; puff him out with humps and bunches behind; pinch his waist into a compass that will allow his lungs only half their breathing capacity; load his head down with superfluous hair—rats, mice, chignons, etc., and stick it full of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of whom was reported to be his wife, but opinions varied as to which of the eight possessed this honour. These demoiselles were expert dressmakers, and plied many other trades necessary for the beautifying of court ladies. A French corset-maker appeared on the scene, and a famous vender of cosmetics. In fact, there were not wanting all the elements which must ever be at hand for serving the whimsies and necessities of noble dames. The titles of these court purveyors ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... delivered recently at St. Saviour's Hospital, that 'she had heard of instances where ladies were so determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that they had actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids fastened the fifteen- inch corset,' has excited a good deal of incredulity, but there is nothing really improbable in it. From the sixteenth century to our own day there is hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... prettiest of underclothing and one of my delights was to be dressed up as a girl, in chemise, drawers and corset; then she would put on my shirt and trousers, and in this kind of demi-toilette we had many a spree in our bedroom, and she did look a pretty boy. She would kiss and chuck me under the chin, calling me her pretty Jemima—"Pretty Jemima, don't say no, what a nice soft Fanny ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... victim before it stops. She is also provided with a caudal appendage that ends in a patent fly-brush. This she uses to wrap around the neck of the milkmaid to prevent her getting away before she has a chance to kick her health corset off and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the modern man in the degree in which it argues exemption from labor; it also adds a peculiar and highly characteristic feature which differs in kind from anything habitually practiced by the men. This feature is the class of contrivances of which the corset is the typical example. The corset is, in economic theory, substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitality and rendering her permanently and obviously unfit for work. It is ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... examining sets of tinted crepe de chine lingerie, and hand-woven hose of spun silk. There were boxes upon boxes, and bureau drawers and closet shelves already filled up with hand-embroidered and lace-trimmed creations-chemises and corset-covers, night-robes of "handkerchief linen" lawn, lace handkerchiefs and veils, corsets of French coutil, dressing-jackets of pale-coloured silks, and negligees of soft batistes, trimmed with Valenciennes lace, or even ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... dictated to a plain woman of genius by the ghost of David Hume.' Herself, too, has been variously described: as 'An Apotheosis of Pupil-Teachery'; as 'George Sand plus Science and minus Sex'; as 'Pallas with prejudices and a corset'; as 'the fruit of a caprice of Apollo for the Differential Calculus.' The comparison of her admirable talent to 'not the imperial violin but the grand ducal violoncello' seems suggestive and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... also an opportune time to demonstrate to what extent serious results may follow mistakes in dressing. The habit of permitting growing girls to constrict the waist, to bind and pull the abdomen by too tight garters, or too tight corset, is wrong, and no mother should permit it. In another part of the book, this matter is taken up more fully, but if it is explained to the girl while she is considering the subject of menstruation, she may more quickly and more fully ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... being sold hot and spiced, as a preventive of rheumatism and chill. To these sales they add fire-screens and ornaments (the English grate in summer being filled with every order of paper ornamentation), laces, millinery, cut flowers, boot and corset laces, and small-wares of every description, including wash-leathers, dressed and undressed dolls, and every variety of knitted articles, mittens, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... to the joy of taking in your clothes, I have not experienced it. And when you find your corset coming closer and closer together (I advise a front lace, so this can be watched), and then the day you realize that you will have to stitch in a tuck or get a ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... may trail her silken robe, And bind her locks with pearls, And one may wreathe the woodland rose Among her floating curls; And one may tread the dewy grass, And one the marble floor, Nor half-hid bosom heave the less, Nor broidered corset more! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... although now, it is said, affected by third rate actresses and women of indifferent character only. The waist is an infallible index to the moral worth of a woman; very little of the latter survives the pressure of a tightened corset. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Sydenham, Ontario (it is stated), the Corset has been declared to be "incompatible with Christianity!" If some of our fashionable dames uttered their innermost feelings, they would doubtless reply, "So much the worse for—Christianity." It is so obvious that many modish Mammas care much ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... for. Slowly Dandy Jim deflated himself; and then, on the fair and just instant, I pulled. I pulled hard and long. The game was won. Dandy Jim had now the waist of that matron wearing the Sveltina corset, over in the part of the magazine where the stories die away. I fearlessly bestrode him and ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... with a bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing-table with a mirror and a switch on it, appears. Seated at it a handsome negress is trying on a brilliant head scarf. Her dressing-gown is thrown back from her shoulders to her chair. She is in corset, knickers, and silk stockings. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... outfit that she had formerly put into the house. She was determined that her cousin should be as well dressed as Madame Garceland's little girl. She bought the child fashionable boots of bronzed kid like those the little Tiphaines wore, very fine cotton stockings, a corset by the best maker, a dress of blue reps, a pretty cape lined with white silk, —all this that she, Sylvie, might hold her own against the children of the women who had rejected her. The underclothes were quite in keeping with the visible articles of dress, for Sylvie feared the examining ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind, And be safe in my corset-lacing. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... dreadful woman wear a corset?" demanded Mrs. Hilliard in a stage whisper of Ruth, whose face ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... mirrors and artificial light help sales—no woman over thirty but was grateful for her pink-and-gray room with its soft lights. And Harriet herself conformed to the picture. She took a lesson from the New York modistes, and wore trailing black gowns. She strapped her thin figure into the best corset she could get, and had her black hair marcelled and dressed high. And, because she was a lady by birth and instinct, the result was not incongruous, but refined ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... females described in the sixth act is well worthy of our observation. It consisted of a corset of white silk and a fine red upper garment, besides the usual lower dress, ornaments, and a chaplet of flowers. It has received several modifications ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... one of these days to be that kind of beauty, so tall and slender. Her waist measure is only twenty-one and two thirds inches. The woman who makes her corsets and my mamma's told us so. She brought us one of her corsets to look at, a love of a corset, in brocatelle, all over many-colored flowers. That material is much more 'distingue' ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... be happy, merry workers, as well as hard, responsible workers, they will have to learn to do without stays; they will have to train their own muscles to supply them with the support they now seek in the corset. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... know? You 'cannot agree'! You have seen her when she is laced in her stage costume, when she prinks and prattles, with the paint, and the powder, and her best corset on. It is I who am 'behind the scenes,' mon ami, not you. I see her dirty peignoir and her curl rags. At four o'clock in the afternoon. Every day. You ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... unsympathetic; with Mr. Frederic Harrison, regards smoking as a degrading and unclean habit; cannot see, herself, any difference between shag and Mayblossom, seeing that they are both the same price; thinks you fussy. The corset shop is run by a most presentable young man in a Vandyck beard. The wife runs the restaurant; the man does the cooking, and yet the woman has not reached freedom ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... the shadow of those marble walls, where once the sainted Borromeo preached, the cunningest Parisian artists may be found—so rich in corn and wine and silk are Lombard plains-modists and mercers, corset-makers, lacemen, skilled so to clothe the limbs of beauty, that every fold shall but display the perfect handiwork of nature, yet add to it the further grace of art. Makers of tiny slippers and ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... like the halberd commonly used in China from the seventh century before Christ. Yamato armour affords little assistance to the archaeologist: it bears no particularly close resemblance to any type familiar elsewhere. There was a corset made of sheet iron, well rivetted. It fastened in front and was much higher behind than before, additioned protection for the back being provided by a lattice-guard which depended from the helmet and was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... one of them fancy names for a corset or a patent lamp," he complained. "It's this here summer business that done it. They swarm in here with their private hacks and their hired help all togged out till you'd think they was generals in the army, and they play that game of sissy-shinny (drop-the-handkerchief for mine, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... took care of that. He would never let me wear a corset, and for years he made me do calisthenics ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... advance of knowledge, and improved treatment of specific ailments. The danger is apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, who has only one hobby and traces every human ill to strong liquor or tobacco, or the corset, or taxation of personal property, or denial of universal suffrage, or the eating of meat, or the want of the centralization of nearly all initiative and interest and property in the state. The tendency of the accomplished specialist in medicine is to refer all physical ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... asked what she has done to make the world better, and when she has to confess that she has never done anything outside of her own house, and nothing there except agreeable things, such as entertaining friends who next week will entertain her, and embroidering 'insets' for corset-covers for dainty ladies who already have corset-covers enough to fill a store-window,—I wonder if she will be able to put it over on the heavenly doorkeeper that 'the Doctor would not let her.' If all I hear is true, Saint Peter will say, 'Who is this person you ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... course, she wore no corset, but only a narrow belt—was very becoming: a light blouse, a mouse-coloured skirt, close fitting over the hips and not reaching to her ankles, grey silk stockings, and white suede shoes ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... scarf so delicate in texture that it made one doubt if human fingers could have fabricated such gossamer, was wound about her throat to diminish its length, and partly conceal it; leaving imperfectly visible the treasures of the bust which were cleverly enclosed in a corset. Her figure was indeed a masterpiece ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... liable to this difficulty than her mate, just as the human being is more liable to it than the four-legged beast. Man's upright position has not been well adjusted by appropriate structures. Childbearing, lack of vigorous exercise, the corset, and the hustle and bustle of the early morning hours so that regular habits are not formed, bring about a sluggish bowel. Indeed it is a cynicism amongst physicians that the proper definition of woman ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the skin, she looked at her handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin did to make his hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved. She put on new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset straight, without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of having a new gown, well made, which ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig on—and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest—and which really does look great on Macbeth ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... was no ordinary woman of Western make. She had been imported from the East by her husband three years before. She had been 'forelady in a corset factory,' when matrimony had enticed her away, and the thought that walked beside her as she baked, and washed, and fed the calves, was that some day she would go 'back East.' And this in spite of the fact that for those parts she ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... she rose to depart. "Why so hurried? Let us see. Take of the wrap. Step behind the screen and loosen your corset. Perhaps even you could take ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... She will not place the corpses of cats or birds on her head. She will not wear mops at the bottom of her dress to sweep up the filth of the earth. She will not wear shoes that injure her as the heathen do. She will not put her body in the vice of a corset, displacing the organs of her body, unfitting her to be a mother, causing more than half the surgical operations in the hospitals. She will then discuss character more than fashion. She will be ashamed of her silly, giggling and meaningless conversation. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... Every muscle was almost immovable. I could climb only a few steps without weakening to the stopping-point. I breathed only by gasps, and my heart became violent and feeble by turns. I felt as if cinched in a steel corset. After I had spent ten long minutes and was only half-way up a slope, the entire length of which I had more than once climbed in a few minutes and in fine shape, I turned to retreat, but as there was no cessation of the electrical colic, I faced about ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Doctor laid her gently down, his practiced hand over the heart. "No; she's not dead. The blow was aimed at her heart, but something in her dress—a corset, probably—turned the weapon aside. Call me a cab, somebody. You're off duty, I think, sergeant—can you come ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... notwithstanding her continual rambles along the beach in her girlish days, of exquisite purity. Her education, I grieve to say, had been most shamefully neglected; her mother, though a most exemplary woman, both as a Christian and a member of society, had never tied her up in a fashionable corset to improve her figure, nor sent her to a fashionable boarding school to improve her mind; the consequence was that she knew nothing of the piano,—Virgil seems to have had the gift of prophecy with regard to this part of modern education, when he said ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... their husbands see the puffs, the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegant edifices of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or decoration for him. The corset—half the time it is a corset of a reparative kind—lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to take it away with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk protections round the sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a coiffeur, all the false ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... failed completely. His girlish manners made him suspected by the police, who took him for a girl dressed in boy's clothes, and threatened to arrest him. When he was compelled to put on male attire he consoled himself with wearing a woman's chemise and corset underneath. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... up in a corset which she wore only once a week, walked along erect, with her squeezed-in waist, her broad shoulders and prominent hips, swinging herself a little. She wore a hat trimmed with flowers, made by a milliner at Yvetot, and displayed the back of her full, round, supple ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... read the English papers, after dinner went and sat three hours with Mr. Scholfield; found him less altered than most of my old acquaintances, he lives with his daughter who is married to a Londoner, named Patten, and carries on the stay or corset business. Mr. S. a very sensible man greatly opposed to Jackson; has some little municipal office; well acquainted with the Crooks, Mrs. Marsden, and others. Had tea with the Masons, and had a good deal of talk about old matters in England. ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... Josephine. Madame was spending several days at Malmaison, when one day one of her ladies, whom she had caused to be sent for, found, on entering the room, to her great astonishment, Cardinal Fesch discharging the duty of a lady's maid by lacing up his sister, who had on only her underclothing and her corset. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... dollars for the machine which Amasa Howe had brought with him, and agreed to pay Elias fifteen dollars per week if he would enter his service, and adapt the machine to his business of umbrella and corset making. As this was his only hope of earning a livelihood, Elias accepted the offer, and, upon his brother's return to the United States, sailed for England. He remained in Mr. Thomas's employ for about eight months, and at the end of that time left him, having found ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... wondered what to send you as a Christmas gift, and it seemed a hard problem to solve. I fear you will wonder at what I am sending; but, knowing that you are nearly thirteen years old and must be growing very fast, I have decided to send you a corset. I hope you will like and appreciate it ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... domestic animals at play, wild birds singing, and children brought up to colder water than their fathers. It should have been our business to pursue health till we no longer needed the interior of the chemist's shop, the optician's store, the hairdresser's, the corset-maker's, the thousand and one emporiums which patch and prink us, promoting our fancies and disguising the ravages which modern life makes in our figures. Our ambition should have been to need so little that, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... dramatic spectacle of abandonment; decencies gone down before desire, the heart ruptured and broken through its walls. In such a moment of soul dishabille and her own dishabille of bosom bulging above the tight lacing of her corset-line as she lay prone, her mouth sagging and wet with tears, her lips blowing outward in bubbles, a picture, in fact, to gloss over, Mae Munroe dragged herself closer, flinging her arms about the knees of Mr. Zincas, sobbing through ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... young men of her class; too much exercise, or lack of rest and quiet at certain periods when nature demands it. All the while the physician is silent concerning the glove-fitting, steel-clasped corset, the heavy, dragging skirts, the bands engirding the body, the pinching, deforming boot, and the ruinous social dissipation of fashionable society. These will account for much of the feebleness of young women and girls. For they exhaust nervous force, make freedom ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... in this jail, I think, Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink. She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid Will not scorn with me this jail-bird trade, Pets some fox-eyed boy who turns the trick, Tho' he win a button or a stick, Pencil, garter, ribbon, corset-lace— HIS the ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... ci-devant Comtesse, who at the same time assured me that young French women, clad in this airy manner, brave all the rigour of winter. "A simple piece of linen, slightly laced before," said she, "while it leaves the waist uncompressed, answers the purpose of a corset. If they put on a robe, which is not open in front, they dispense with petticoats altogether; their cambric chemise having the semblance of one, from its skirt being trimmed with lace. When attired for a ball, those who dance, as you may observe, commonly ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... called on him, and said, politely, he had hoped to receive another call ere this. "Personally," said he, "I was much struck with your observations; but my daughter is afraid she will catch cold if she leaves off her corset, and that, you know, might ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... your eyes," says Nikolay Timofeitch in dismay. "What's that for? Come to the corset department, I'll ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Brussels to finish her education; she is of middle size, stiffly made, body long, legs short, bust much developed but not compactly moulded, waist disproportionately compressed by an inhumanly braced corset, dress carefully arranged, large feet tortured into small bottines, head small, hair smoothed, braided, oiled, and gummed to perfection; very low forehead, very diminutive and vindictive grey eyes, somewhat Tartar features, rather flat nose, rather high-cheek ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, "are as filled with sedition as a whale with corset bones. Also the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... my knees beside her, and loosened, as well as I was able, her dress and corset; but while I was thus engaged, a grasp descended on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a rhyme for alfalfa, maybe. And where would you be, you old skate? If the Louise of me had been developed at the expense of the Billy of me, and I'd taken to making battenburg doilies with butterflies in the corners, and embroidering corset covers till I put my eyes out, and writing poetry on Sundays when mommie wouldn't let me sew. I wonder if Ward— Maybe he'd have liked me better if I'd lived up to the Louise and cut out the Billy part. I'd be ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... labels. Most of 'em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet's nest and half of an old corset-cover. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... and sending his name down to posterity as that of a very extraordinary person. 'I loathe this ink-spattering century', he says, 'when I read in my Plutarch of great men.... I am to squeeze my body into a corset and lace up my will in laws.... Law has never made a great man, but freedom hatches out colossi and extremes, O that the spirit of Hermann were still glowing in the ashes! Place me at the head of an army of fellows ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... by a high apartment building, and another still higher rose like a cliff just back of the house in which Roger lived. Still others, and many factory lofts, reared shadowy bulks on every hand. From the top of one an enormous sign, a corset pictured forth in lights, flashed out at regular intervals; and from farther off, high up in the misty haze of the night, could be seen the gleaming pinnacle where hour by hour that great bell slowly boomed the time away. Yes, here the old was passing. Already the tiny parklet was ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... can sleep; yet dressed enough for any emergency. I think a house gown of pretty material much neater than the kimono. Be sure this fits about the shoulders, and never have loose flowing sleeves. A white frill in the neck looks very trim, and is always becoming. The corset and all tight clothes should be removed, stockings and underwear kept on. The hair should be arranged simply, but not allowed to hang in a loose braid, unless you are very sure you will not see any but the patient, and even then it ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
