AMERICAN NOTES.

Grey River Argus, Volume VI, Issue 440, 7 November 1868, Page 3

AMERICAN NOTES.

(Correspondent of Daily Times.) Public curiosity has been awakened by a new extravagance in fashion. At least some call it new, while others declare that it was practised by the daughters of Eve before the advent of the present generation. It is known by the graceful title of the Grecian Bend, and consists in so dressing the female form as to enable its votary to effect a certain sort of walk, which has been not inaptly likened to the attempts of an inexperienced poodle to walk upon its hind legs. From what I have read and what I have seen I have no hesitation in stating that the Grecian Bend is a highly improper and thoroughly vulgar fashion, and I hope it will not be introduced in your part of the world. I should be loth to trust to my powers of description to enlighten your readers as to the manner in which young ladies dress who wish to adopt the fashion, and I therefore trespass upon the description of a correspondent to one of the morning papers. He writes from a fashionable watering place, and displays a suspicious knowledge of the intricacies of the feminine toilet. The waist of the dress (which has a six-foot train) ig, exceedingly tight, and the body is low and rather loose at the top. A hoop of moderate dimensions is worn, overspread, with an underskirt or two ; underneath the rear of this hoop, just below the waist, is bound a coil of wire from two to three inches in diameter, which elevates the upper portion of the dress behind, and forms the foundation, so to speak, of an exterior protuberance called the panier. The panier isja bustle, more or less enormous, upon which, in successive folds or layers gathered up, an extra skirt hangs, or rather " wobbles," to and fro. High-hoeled shoes dispose the wearer to incline forward, and the belle of the season is by this means enabled to elevate her hips unnaturally behind, enchanting the aspect of the panier, to contract herself in front, and to form an S-like curvature of her upper shape by thrusting out her chest, drawing back her shoulders and bending forward her head, which latter is crowned by a monstrous chignon. 'Thus bent and deformed, the belle constrains , , her elbows against her ' sides j 'and wiih horizontal forearms and little gloved hands dangling from limp wrists, tilts painfully along. Such is the Grecian Bend, a distortion of shape not only painful and wearisome, but also unseemly and unladylike. A very singular illustration of the powers of magnetism in diseases of the brain, occurred last night. A man named Joseph M. Settle, a miner, from Placerville, staying at the Occidental Hotel, suddenly became insane, and rushed down into the reading room of the hotel in a perfectly frantic state. It was? found necessary to

removo him, but so violent were his struggles that four policemen were scarcely able to convey him to the atation-house. During his passage there he had bien observed by Dr J.M. Grant, a magnetiser, who at once offered hia services in soothing and quieting the maniac. When the man arrived at the station house he was in a condition of the most violent excitement, and it was impossible for anyone to approach him wit'i impunity. Dr Grant requested the officers who were restrai ling his struggles, to release him, and then (xU.etly placed his hands upon the sufftrjr. Settle at once sank into a chair, and the doctor began to magnetise him. In five minutes the raving, furious madman was ;vs quiet as a child, and in the course of half an hour he was as calm, and almost as rational in his demeanour as anyof those who stood around him. Before the doctor left him he was able to converse freely, and although he appeared to be totally oblivious of the frantic state he had been brought out of, he seemed to have recovered entirely from the maniacal affection which caused his detention. The man was not suffering in any way from the effects of drink, and the attack appeared to be caused by a general derangement of the system. — San Francisco Times. At Owatonna, Minnesota, resided a milliner, Mrs Myrick, who was the mother of a young and fascinating daughter of about sixteen. A very respectable young man named Odell, had been paying the daughttrattention, and they were engaged. A man from Chicago, to whom Mrs Myrick was indebted in the sum of $2000, 0 tme to Owatonna and made the acquaintance of Miss Myrick. He no sooner saw her than he determined to 1 possess her, and being a man unscrupulous as to what means he employed, he offered Mrs Myrick to release her from her obligation of §2000 if she would give him her daughter. She acceded to the proposition. The young and innocent girl shrank from the idea of being sold, and that to a man who seemed anything but fair. She hastened to her lover with the tale, and they promptly decided to elude the vigilance of the mother and thwart her miserable designs by a speedy marriage. They took the first train going east. The mother telegraphed to Cresco and had them arrested, and after her arrival with her miserable partner in the disgraceful bargain, a mock trial was ha 1, and Odell, was held in custody; "at her request, until she got started home with her daughter. But instead of going to Owatonna, the party took the eastward bound train. The young girl was almost frantic, and, it ia said, attempted to leap from, the train. It is also reported that she attempted to jump overboard from the boat at Prairie dv Chion. The whereabouts of Mrs Myrick, her daughter, and the man who sought to have possession of her, are not now known.