THE STOUT SISTERHOOD.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XII, 16 September 1899, Page 474

THE STOUT SISTERHOOD.

Sarah Bernhardt's figure is lathlike in meagreness. Who of us has not laughed at the keen thrust that won for Victor Hugo her lasting hatred—the bon mot that described her portrait and that of her favourite dog as ■■picture of a dog watching a bone?" Naturally the divine actress chooses to depict Hamlet as lean. Literal interpreters of Shakespeare contend that he was "fa- and scant of breath." The laughing public, at heart, sides with the Bernhardt. Custom, tradition, history and art have decided, from am- to age. that it is ridiculous to be fat. The most uproarious mirth of Falstatf's traitorous comrades was provoked by the thought of how he "larded the lean earth as he walked along." When the modern realist would clear his hero's heart of all rem Hants of "love's young dream," he shows him the object of his early passion who has “gained tiesh" during the years of their separation. Druggists' windows and the advertising columns of our newspapers teem with recommendations of anti-fat pills, powders and plasters. The bouncing country belle, albeit as straitlaced in prin eiple as a Lady Abbess, would rather have you call her fast than fat. The matronly queen of metropolitan society cuts parasitic Jenkyns dead when he alludes in print to "the generous proportions of her figure."

Yet —and apr pos of figures—whyshould the scathing assertion that Mrs So-and-So. who heads a crusade

against corsets, "has no figure to speak of" be taken, invariably and with reason, to mean that a shape which may have been passable is

swallowed up and wiped out by adipose tissue? There is. strictly speaking. no more grace in a rail than in the swell of a meal bag. Yet, the bony sister may, without risk of making herself absurd, be vain of what our our granddames approved as “a genteel shape." as the stout sister resents reference to hers as impertinent.

All this in face of the facts that as a comprehensive general rule plumpness denotes health and scrawniness disease; that it isaltogether natural and becoming for a well preserved woman over forty-live years of age to “take on tiesh." The gentle accretion of adi pose tissue upon her frame signifies that she is sound to the core. She has taken a new lease of life, and is oftentimes made over better than nev. The friendly flesh fillsout hollows and prevents wrinkles, supplies curves instead of angles, makes face and figure comely to look upon. These advantages pertain to the normal growth of flesh, firm and healthy —not to the inordinate increase of fat which may be full of sickly humors. When a woman finds her added weight

a burden in walking and an obstruc; tion to free breathing, something is wrong somewhere. She should, without delay, set about bringing her weight down and her strength up. The probabilities are in favour of th supposition that she has herself to blame for the grow ing inconveniences, if other signs of disease are wanting. She has yielded to indolent disinclination to take active exercise while the change in her figure was going on. The Eastern fable of the woman who carried a calf up stairs every day—so accustoming herself to the gradual increase of weight that she did not feel the difference when the calf became a cow—applies well here.

The stout sister must keep herself up to the work of carrying the growing weight. As soon as she feels disposed to slump or to waddle in her gait, to shorten her daily constitutional because she is‘•getting heavy." she should take the alarm and redouble her will power. While she remains •‘light upon her feet." carries her shoulders straight, the chest so well forward and the stomach so well in as not to give occasion for the saucy quotation that -her figure is not so much lost as gone before"—she mav defy criticism and rejoice in maturit v.