Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1870-08-08
Female Fatness at Long Branch.
Correspondence New York Tribune.l

The slightness aud delicacy of Amer
lean women is proverbial; but judging
from the visitors here, they have under
gone change. Are our countrywomen
becoming feshy? Have they suddenly
increased their avoirdupois? If they have
not, the corpulent sisterhood have GER
tainly descended upon the Branch, and
by their liberal presence have not added
to the grace or beauty of villa or hotel
life. Stoutness, especially in the oppo-
site sex, is a misfortune both artistically
and socially. Who would admire the
Venus de Medici, the Madonnas of Raffa-
ellie, or the Magdalens of Tiziano, if they
were plethoric? We all know how diff
cult it is for us to become reconciled to
Reuben's fat wives whom he always
introduces, whether Virgin, or goddess,
or fine lady, into his compost
tons. And We all know how flesh
repels admiration and paralyzes sym
pathy in the realities of life. Europeans
complain that the beautiful American
girl loses her beauty after marriage and
maternity by reason OF her thinness and
angularity. If it we're so, she would be
better off than the danes of the Old
World who run to fatness. Hardly any
French or German, Italian or Spanish,
or even English woman can escape flesh
after forty. 1t comes upon her like an
aesthetic Judgment of the malignant gods,
and all the wooers she has Tilted in her
early days are deeply avenged. ] don't
think I've ever seen SO many tleshy wo-
men at a watering-place us there are at
the Branch this season. Their propoi-
ton is as five to one of the spirituelle,
clear-cut creatures whose
very bodies seem informed with thought |
1t is exceedingly amusing to see the
ever-plump women indulging in their
saltatorial energies at the Continental
and West End hops; and it requires no
little selfdiscipline to prevent one from
laughing at the ludicrous figure they
make. Last evening | could not help
notice one of the unfragile fair who had
a passion for dancing with small men.
The way she grew crimson in the face,
palpitated like a blacksmith's S bellows,
and whirled her diminutive partners
about the room, as if she we're trying to
brush the flies from the ceiling with
lnelr lessi WIS CHliuHo puu lluiSuiouS
spectacle. When she finally let them
20, with generally disheveled and de-
leeted, not to say desperate, air, indi-
eating that they had mentally made
their Wills, and given themselves up for
ost, they made a preplpitate retreat
With bewildered look of gratitude aud
salvation in their perspiring faces. The
small man who dances with very stout
yomap is either simpleton or hero;
ior be exposes himself 20 satiFioal shafts |
hat will pierce through suits of Milan
steel.
The fat woman in the water is funnier
han she is on land. She is like the hip
)opotamus with its. capacity to swim,
md furnishes innumerable subjects for
comic artist, if ne should ever have wit
,nough to sketch from nature. 1t is rare
port ta watch tho corpulept bathers on
he beach. They go into The sea as an
Elephant would undertake the cachuga,
md founder about in the sea, gasping,
,ufiing and snorting in the drollest man
ler ] have Eeen them venture out under
masculine convoy to point where they
lad 10 DO supported; and the style in
which their heads went down and their
eet up, and their ample proportions
oiled over and under in the sn.s reveal
ng dripping red face one moment, and
nuch and varied color in globular form
D another, is not 70 he depicted Ia plain
rose, Porpoises struggling to accom-
lish minuet are not 4 circumstance to
hem. Old ocean himself seems to laugh
( them sometimes; for they are absurd
a the sea and ridiculous on shore But
hey are to be pitied, these mountains of
If they could help their
eshipess, ! presume they would, For-
iaately, however, they are otsensitive;
,r aesh does not 90 with sensibility.