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| Tight lacing, or, The cobler's wife in the fashion, |
Tight Lacing In The Pulpit.
[Mr. Haweis addressing a crowded Congregation at St. James's, Marylebone, spoke very strongly on the Criminal Ignorance and thoughtlessness of Tight Lacing.]
What is it makes a lady's head
Feel heavy as a lump of lead?
What makes her nose's tip so red?
Tight-lacing!
What makes her cheek burn like a coal,
Her feet as cold as Arctic pole?
What cramps her body and her soul?
Tight-lacing!
What makes her temper short and sharp?
What causes her to fret and carp,
And on the smallest ills to harp?
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| Tight-lacing |
Tight-lacing!
What checks her proper circulation,
And dulls her ordinate sensation?
What blighted babes breeds for the nation?
Tight-lacing!
What makes her waist a wasp-like thing,
And gives her tongue a waspish sting?
What baulks her when high notes she'd sing?
Tight-lacing!
What is it, with its vice-like squeeze,
Destroys its fated victim's ease,
And brings her doctors countless fees?
Tight-lacing!
Fashion before Ease... James Gilray
What is it makes her gasp for breath,
And—so stern modern science saith—
Dooms her too oft to early death?
Tight-lacing!
What brings a "corn upon her heart,"
And makes her—spoil'd by cruel art—
Unfit to play the mother's part ?—
Tight-lacing!
What tortures her into a shape
Which "ruts the liver " past escape,
And which, at most, makes gommeux gape ?—
Tight-lacing!
What beauty's lines in her destroys,
And fashion's powerful aid employs,
To crush from out her life its joys ?—
A Little Tighter, Rowlandson
Tight-lacing!
What ages her before her time,
And makes her feeble ere her prime?
What tempts to a self-suffer'd crime ?—
Tight-lacing!
What quite ignoring nature's facts,
Her waist so cruelly contracts,
That each inch saved fresh pain exacts?
Tight-lacing!
And what bad fashion of the day
Is it that ladies now should say
They'll spurn without an hour's delay ?—
Tight-lacing!
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