A flounce on the corsage at the bust-line, another at the hip-line, and yet another at the bottom of the shirt, increases the impression of bulkiness most aggressively and gives a barrel-like appearance to the form of a stout woman that is decidedly funny, as may be seen in sketch No. 44.

A study of the lines of the form will not only aid one in adopting a more becoming style of dress, but will sharpen the artistic perceptions, thus adding to the joy of life.

[Illustration:  No. 44]

“A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face” and should be clothed so that its lines may appear at their best, and not be exaggerated and caricatured.  The figure is seen many more times than the face, and the defects of the former are more conspicuous than those of the latter.

Do not be unjust to your beautiful body, the temple of your soul; above all, do not caricature it by selecting your clothes with indiscriminating taste.

No matter what the prevailing mode these rules may be practically applied.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW PLUMP AND THIN BACKS SHOULD BE CLOTHED.

She was from the middle-West, and despite the fact that she was married, and that twenty-one half-blown blush roses had enwreathed her last birthday cake, she had the alert, quizzical brightness of a child who challenges everybody and everything that passes with the countersign—­“Why?” She investigated New York with unabashed interest, and, like many another superior provincial, she freely expressed her likes and dislikes for its traditions, show-places, and people with a commanding and amusing audacity.

Her objections were numerous.  The chief one that made a deep impression upon her metropolitan friends was her disapproval of Sarah Bernhardt’s acting.  The middle-Westerner, instead of becoming ecstatic in her admiration, and at a loss for adjectives at the appearance of the divine Sarah, merely perked at the great French artist for some time and then demanded, querulously:  “What’s the matter with her?  Why does she play so much with her back to the audience?  I don’t like it.”

It was a shock to the adorers of Sarah Bernhardt to hear her so irreverently criticised.  They loyally united in her defence, and sought to squelch the revolter by loftily explaining that the actress turned her back so often to the audience because she had such a noble, generous nature and desired to give the other actors a chance.  “She lets them take the centre of the stage, as they say in the profession,” remarked one of the party, who prided herself upon being versed in the argot of the theatre.

“But she plays with her back to the audience when she is speaking and acting, and everybody else on the stage is still but herself,” petulantly insisted the Western Philistine, showing no signs of defeat.