BELLE says – “Please let me join in the all absorbing discussion you have introduced at the ENGLISHWOMAN’S monthly Conversazione, and let me first thank STAYLACE for her capital letter. I quite agree with her in suspecting the story of the young lady at the boarding-school to be overdrawn a little. Would the young lady herself oblige us with a description of her ‘tortures?’ as I and several of my friends who follow the present fashion of small waists are curious to know something of them, having never experienced these terrible sufferings, though my waistband measures only eighteen inches. The truth is, there are always a number of fussy middle-aged people who (with the best intentions, no doubt) are always abusing some article of female dress. The best of it is, these benevolent individuals are usually of that sex whose costume precludes them from making a personal trial of the articles they condemn. Now, it is the crinoline which draws forth their indignant outcries – now the corset – and not the chignon. They know not from their own experience how the crinoline relieves us from the weight of many under-skirts and prevents them from clinging to us while walking, and they have never felt the comfortable support of a well-made corset. Yet, they decry the use of the first as unaccountable, and of the second as suicidal. Let me tell them, however, that the ladies themselves judge from practice and not from theory, and if the opponents of the corset require proof of this let me remind them that compression of the waist has been more or less universal throughout the civilized world for three or four centuries, in spite of reams of paper and gallons of printing-ink. I may add that for my own part, I have always laced tightly, and have always enjoyed good health. Allow me to recommend ladies to have their corsets made to measure and if they do not feel, they suffer any inconvenience, they may certainly take the example of your clever correspondent STAYLACE, and look upon the outcry as a ‘bugbear and so much can’t.’