The people who succeed in this world are the people who get up and look around for the circumstances they want; if they cannot find them, make them. “Circumstances,” said Napoleon, “I make circumstances.”
There are four mental requisites necessary to the achievement of success, namely: a clear view of the end; a judicious indifference to the sentiment around by the sweeping away of obstacles; an indomitable energy; and the power to resist the temptation to rest on the soporific plane of mediocrity.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] “Education as the Controlling Factor in the Physical Life of Woman,” Four Epochs of Woman’s Life.
[6] “Sex and Society.”
CHAPTER VIII
DRESS THE FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF WOMAN’S PHYSICAL DETERIORATION
The History of Woman’s Dress; the Corset in History; the Crusade Against the Corset; the Influence of the Corset on the Female Body; the Curved Front Corset; the Relation of Corsets to Abdominal and Pelvic Disorders; the Effects of Corsets on the Muscles; the Straight Front Corset; the Abdominal Corset; the Wearing of Corsets by Young Girls; What Style of Corset is the Least Injurious; the Shoe; the Stockings; the Essential Qualities for Winter Underclothing; the Length of the Walking Skirt; the Winter Street Dress.
A careful study of the history of woman’s dress affords a forcible demonstration of the fact that the fundamental cause of the inferior physique and lowered vitality of the modern woman of civilization is to be found in not only her own, but also in her female ancestors’ unhygienic mode of dress for many centuries.
Study the physique and dress of the ancient Greeks, then follow the history of dress down through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the present time, and, if further proof be needed, visit, as has been done, the savage races of the earth to-day, and behold women of powerful and classic physique still exist in lands where the body is not molded according to the barbarous decrees of the “modiste of fashion.”
The History of Woman’s Dress.—The history of Greek costume is for the most part free from what is known as change of fashion, for the reason that the Greeks did not attempt to reconcile the two opposite principles of covering, and at the same time displaying the figure; that is to say, of cutting the dress to fit the body.