The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-08-09
HISTORY OF CoRSETS.
THEY DATE away BACK 10 THE
GREEK ZONA.

You Must BE Cafefu' WI the Silier II
You Court a Scotch Lassie-Women
Should BE Upholsterers-How Rich
Women Dress.
Alteration for the human form has
overed the feet, bedecked the hands
with jeweled t%rifles, and encased the
body feminine in stiff whalebones I'M
til it has become of different shape
than nature intended.
The corset has held sway long and
firmly. Even in the days when the
Greek sculptors builded their ideal OF
beauty on the Venus de Milo writer's
inveighed against large waists, OVID
putting them at the head OF remedies
against love.
Corsets were an undoubted out
growth from the bandages worn by h
Greeks to restrain a tendency to cor
pulency, and were as much used by
men as by women, if we are to believe
Aristophanes. History also relates
that Marc Antony had need to resort
to such means Ito compress his swell
ing figure" The bands were three in
number-the strophium, a bandage
wound round the bust; q IONA, or the
waist belt, and the tenta, wound
round and round below the waist.
Nor were the bandages worn alone for
COMPRISING undue rotundity of form.
They were made wider and longer
and wrapped in large folds about
slight figures to give them the grace
of undulating lines. From the latter
use, more than the former, has
descended the reprehensible habit OF
lacing, the cause of the cutlery against
the stiff, whaleboned corset OF to-day.
In the ancient days a very thin,
slender figure attained to a much adj
mired position by being EMBODIED in a
large and voluminous strophium and
tsnta, and using only n thickness OF
bandage as the iona, producing the
first effect of an unnaturally small
waist. When this did not prove
effectual in Disgusting the lack OF
c%ushioning to their bones they resorted
to oils and ungents for bathing the
body; goose fat mixed with warm milk
and the egg of a partridge, the con-
glomeration being highly scented, was
deemed the most productive OF the de-
sired embonpoint. But great care was
taken that not a drop should fall on
the body near the waist; in fact, while
going through the fattening process
the iona vas worn day and night.
She Had a Frugal Mind.
A young fellow was very sweet on a
Scotch spinster. She was wealthy,
but if there is a kind of oma who
must be loved economically, and for
herself alone, it is a Scotch spinster.
Scotch spinsters are warranted TO
make good wives all the time. 1t is
awfully hard to be untrue to a Scotch
woman. She makes you so very
comfortable, and holds you to her not
so much by your heart as by your
bank account. She doesn't always
want new bonnets; she is rather liable
to object ven to you having a new
hat until the old is quite worn
out. A Scotch wife can keep her hus-
band neat and trim, and herself and
her children as well at a smaller eX-
pense than any Others. She doesn't
want diamond earrings for her birth
day. All you have to do is to show
her your bank account and kiss her
and tell her you owe the balance to
her, and she is quite satisfied.
This young fellow did not quite I'M
derstanu the Scotch spinster, and
when he thought to please her he
sem her a lovely and expensive basket
of flowers. He went up to receive
her thanks and smiles, and he was
quite knocked over when she told him
he hadn't a big enough salary TO
waste it buying flowers for her or any
body else, and she was sorry to see
he was so extravgant, because other
wise he was "a very pleasin' young
man." He lied himself back into her
good graces by saying he had got the
flowers for nothing, and he thought
ne could not make better use of them.
She smiled graciously and said:-
''Seein' they did ma cost you anything,
it's a great compliment" She was a
woman, after all .-EGchonge.