"Yes, my little boy; he resides in the second house on the right hand, my little boy."
Now, as the scales always allude to two hundred and odd whenever I step on, her remark struck me as sarcastic.
I said at once, lifting my hat, "I hope you will pardon me, I did not intend any offence."
"All right," said she, "but I thought you were making fun of me, by calling me 'little girl.'"
"I trust you will believe me when I assure you that nothing was farther from my mind; but you were so small, I supposed you were a little girl, and so, without thinking, I called you so; it is so dark I could not see your face."
"All right, sir; but my husband would have been very angry if he had heard you call me a little girl."
Born of the same parents, fed at the same table, educated at the same school, why, in America, does a man weigh fifty pounds more than a woman?
I know a good many young ladies, very active in the matrimonial market, who do not weigh more than ninety pounds, and, poor little silly geese, are squeezing themselves as tight as possible with corsets.
This petite size can be accounted for. Nothing, to my mind, is plainer.
Exercise is the great law of development Our girls have no adequate exercise. Besides, the organs on which growth depends, viz., the lungs, stomach and liver, are reduced, by the corset, to half the natural size and activity. These two causes, with living in the shade, explain the alarming decrease in the size of the average American woman.