"Then why continue to do so?" I argued.

"Oh, it's easy enough to talk," she explained; "a few old fogies like
you"--I had been speaking very plainly to her, and she was cross with
me--"may pretend you don't like small waists, but the average man
does."

Poor girl! She was quite prepared to injure herself for life, to
damage her children's future, to be uncomfortable for fifteen hours a
day, all to oblige the average man.

It is a compliment to our sex. What man would suffer injury and
torture to please the average woman? This frenzied desire of woman
to conform to our ideals is touching. A few daring spirits of late
years have exhibited a tendency to seek for other gods--for ideals of
their own. We call them the unsexed women. The womanly women lift
up their hands in horror of such blasphemy.

When I was a boy no womanly woman rode a bicycle--tricycles were
permitted. On three wheels you could still be womanly, but on two
you were "a creature"! The womanly woman, seeing her approach, would
draw down the parlour blind with a jerk, lest the children looking
out might catch a glimpse of her, and their young souls be smirched
for all eternity.

No womanly woman rode inside a hansom or outside a 'bus. I remember
the day my own dear mother climbed outside a 'bus for the first time
in her life. She was excited, and cried a little; but nobody--heaven
be praised!--saw us--that is, nobody of importance. And afterwards
she confessed the air was pleasant.