The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-11-12

Apropos of the persistent rumors of
the return of tight lacing which all the
fashion authorities seem agreed to pre-
diet as a not remote possibility some
body has come forward with the theory
that whatever the effect upon the
mothers of men, the custom is conduc-
i've to the production of geniuses and
in support of this rather original and
daring theory are given the names of
Bacon, Shakespeare, Drake, Marlbor-
borough, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott,
TennysOn-to mention only few
nameS-who were born when chron-
iclers and fashion plates reveal to us
the fact that a woman was never sat
isfed until she could span her waist
with her two hands and while eighteen
inches was the fashionable standard
many women and girls compressed
their waists to a measurement two or
three inches smaller.
Now that we are again seeing neat
er figures than have prevailed for ten
or twelve years and corsetieres predict
a return of tight lacing let us hope
that there may be something in the
theory and that a crop of geniuses may
result from the torture of the victims
of fashion.
But Thackeray whom this ingenious
theory would make indebted for his
gifts to an eighteen-inch waist STAN
dard for the female form divine, said
that he would as lief marry a girl with
a bumped back as one with an eigh-
teen-inch waist. ar
Veronica was lolling in an armchair,
wrapped in a loose, creamy matinee
gown, with an expression of profound
melancholy on her delicate, intellectual
tumnal roses on a table at her elbow.
Veronica affects old Gobelins for her
walls, and she has nice taste in early
italian art. There are always too many
books in the room in which she lives
which accounts for her short-sighted
eyes and a straight line between her
brows. A book-a yellow-backed
French nove1-slipped from her fingers
as she rose to meet her visitor.
Marcel Prevost!" said the caller,
picking up the book and throwing it on
a distant divan. 'LAutomne dune
Femme! What a book to read when
you live on Central Park West and can
witness the process. The thing is
idiotic.'
but it's profoundly true" murmur-
ed Veronica How is it that the
youngest Frenchman seems somehow
to understand the eternal tragedy of a
woman's life? This is one of Prevost's
early books; he could have been only
in his twenties when he wrote it. And
yet how few writers, except 'Annunzio
in that awful II Fuoco,' have ever de-
picted like this the terrible heart-sink-
ing, the feeling of numbness, of lone
illness which attacks every woman who
arrives at middle age. It is horrible,
horrible
Nothing horrible about it at all; if
you take cold tub, keep cheerful, di-
gest your dinner, and play golf"
Il suppose that is why you look so
young?" she said, scrutinizingly, with
eyes. Now, if there is one
trick which ages a, person a full decade
it is that of half-closing her eyes. Some
highly intellectual people do 1t, and the
result is they sometimes look as if they
had lived about 1000 years. and borne
all the sins and sorrow of the world
upon their shoulders during that time.
I'll tell you about it later. In the
I must confess to you that
NJ. Marcel Prevost's heroine always
seemed to me passably ridiculous. To u
begin with, she expected to keep the
love of a man years younger than her. |
self, and thought herself a martyr be-
cause she couldn't. BY grizzling, and |
the said young man, she
mme diately added years to her age
and wrinkles galore to her once pretty |
face. Whereas, she should have gone I
IN for massage and begun fresh love |
affair"
eff there is one thing annoying
about you declared Veronica, sit is |
hat you are so dreadfully optimistic. |
AS If one could do things like that"
Her eye fingered for an instant on a |
1t represented a man of |
or SO, mounted on a snowy
mare.
Veronica had recently been staying |
1T a Westbury country house. The
visitor shifted a romance, delighted. /