A SCHOOL MISTRESS CORRESPONDENT says – “As a regular subscriber to your valuable Magazine, I see you have invited your numerous readers to discuss the subject brought forward by a correspondent in Edinburgh, and as the principal of a large ladies’ school in that city, I feel sure you will kindly allow me space to say a few words in reply to her letter. In the first place it must be apparent that your correspondent committed a great mistake in placing her daughter at a fashionable school if she did not wish her to become a fashionable belle, or she should at least have given instructions that her daughter should not have her figure trained in what everyone knows is the fashionable style. For my own part I have always paid particular attention to the figures of the young ladies entrusted to my care, and being fully convinced that is the general health is properly attended to, corsets are far from being the dreadfully hurtful things some people imagine. I have never hesitated to employ this most important and elegant article of dress, except in one case where the pupil was of a consumptive tendency, and I was specially requested not to all her to dress at all tightly. All my pupils enjoy good health, my great secret being regular exercise, a point which is almost always disregarded. It appears from your correspondent’s letter that the young lady did not experience any inconvenience after the first two years she was at the school, nor does her mother say her health was affected. She only complains that she is no longer a ‘romping girl’. Now, no young lady of eighteen who expects to move in fashionable society would wish to be thought a ‘romping girl.’ With regard to the slight pain in the muscles which the young lady described as ‘torture,’ this was no doubt caused by her not having been accustomed by degrees to a close-fitting dress before she went to the school. I find that girls who have commenced the use of stays at an early age, and become gradually used to them, do not experience any uneasiness when they are worn tighter at fourteen or fifteen. There can be no doubt that a slender figure is as much admired as ever, and always will be so. The present fashion of short waists is admitted on all hands to be very ugly, and will soon go out. Those girls, then, who have not had their figures properly attended to while growing will be unable to reduce their waists when the fashion changes, whereas, by proper care now, they will be able to adopt the fashion of longer waists without any inconvenience. I trust you will allow us schoolmistresses fair play in this important matter, and insert this or part of it in your Magazine.”