Jest like wimmen’s love, and divine ardor, and holy desires for a world’s good—­jest exactly.

It wuz a good-lookin’ head-dress.

Her figger wuz noble, jest as majestic and perfect as the human form can be.  And it stood up there jest as the Lord meant wimmen to stand, not lookin’ like a hour-glass or a pismire, but a good sensible waist on her, jest as human creeters ort to have.

I don’t know what dressmakers would think of her.  I dare presoom to say they would look down on her because she didn’t taper.  And they would probable be disgusted because she didn’t wear cossets.

But to me one of the greatest and grandest uses of that noble figger wuz to stand up there a-preachin’ to more than a million wimmen daily of the beauty and symmetry of a perfect form, jest as the Lord made it, before it wuz tortured down into deformity and disease by whalebones and cosset strings.

Imagine that stately, noble presence a-scrunchin’ herself in to make a taper on herself—­or to have her long, graceful, stately draperies cut off into a coat-tail bask—­the idee!

Here wuz the beauty and dignity of the human form, onbroken by vanity and folly.  And I did hope my misguided sect would take it to heart.

And of all the crowds of wimmen I see a-standin’ in front of it admirin’ it, I never see any of ’em, even if their own waists did look like pismires, but what liked its looks.

Till one day I did see two tall, spindlin’, fashionable-lookin’ wimmen a-lookin’ at it, and one sez to the other: 

“Oh, how sweet she would look in elbow-sleeves and a tight-fittin’ polenay!”

“Yes,” sez the other; “and a bell skirt ruffled almost to the waist, and a Gainsboro hat, and a parasol.”

“And high-heel shoes and seven-button gloves,” sez the other.

And I turned my back on them then and there, and don’t know what other improvements they did want to add to her—­most likely a box of French candy, a card-case, some eye-glasses, a yeller-covered novel, and a pug dog.  The idee!

[Illustration:  “How sweet she would look!”]

And as I wended on at a pretty good jog after hearin’ ’em, I sez to myself—­

“Some wimmen are born fools, some achieve foolishness, and some have foolishness thrust on ’em, and I guess them two had all three of ’em.”

I said it to myself loud enough so’s Josiah heard me, and he sez in joyful axents—­

“I am glad, Samantha, that you have come to your senses at last, and have a realizin’ sense of your sect’s weaknesses and folly.”

And I wuz that wrought up with different emotions that I wuz almost perfectly by the side of myself, and I jest said to him—­

“Shet up!”

I wouldn’t argy with him.  I wuz fearful excited a-contemplatin’ the heights of true womanhood and the depths of fashionable folly that a few—­a very few—­of my sect yet waded round in.