A PHILOSOPHER IN STAYS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1116, 3 July 1883, Page 1

A PHILOSOPHER IN STAYS.

Mr R. A. Procter, the -well-known lecturer on astronomy, has tried the experiment of wearing a corset, and thus describes the result : —“ W#en the subject of corset-wearing was£st**fer discussion in the pages of the English Mechanic. I was struck with the ap-

parent weight of evidence in favor of tight-lacing. I was, in particular, struck by the evidence of some as/to its use in reducing corpulence. I was corpulent. I also was disposed., as .1 am still, to take an interest in /scientific experiments. 1 thought I would give the matter a fair trial, I read all instructions, carefully followed th-ra, and varied the time of pressure with that ‘ perfectly stiff busk ’ about which correspondents were so enthusiastic. I was foolish enough to try the thing ~ for a matter of four weeks. Then I laughed at myself as a hopeless idiot, and determined to give up the attempt to reduce by artificial means that superabundance of fat on which only starvation tail exorcise, or the air of America, has <. v r had any real redu ing influen «,m But I was reckoning without my host; As the Chinese lady suffers, 1 am tol l when her feet-bindings are taken oil’, and as the fiat-headed baby howls when his head-boards are removed, so for a vrhil# was it with me. 1 found myself manifestly better in stays. I laughed at myself no longer, I was too angry with myself to laugh, I would as soon have condemned myself to using crutches all the time as to wealing

always a" busk, Lot for one month of folly I hud to endure i time months of discomfort. At the end of that time I was my own man again.”