"Corset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... call at three. Walked to the Exchange and read the English papers, after dinner went and sat three hours with Mr. Scholfield; found him less altered than most of my old acquaintances, he lives with his daughter who is married to a Londoner, named Patten, and carries on the stay or corset business. Mr. S. a very sensible man greatly opposed to Jackson; has some little municipal office; well acquainted with the Crooks, Mrs. Marsden, and others. Had tea with the Masons, and had a good deal of talk about old matters in England. ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... progressing, but not so rapidly as he wished. To aid matters a bit, he invented a brace and extension to his middle finger. It gave him a farther reach and a stronger stroke, he thought. In secret he practised for hours with this "corset" on his finger; he didn't know that a corset means weakness, not strength. After three straight hours of practise one day, he took the machine from his hand and was astonished to see the finger curl up like a pretzel. He hurried to a physician ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... managed to find Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind And be safe in my corset-lacing. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... gentleman-in-waiting, cleanly shaven and speaking her language, and not in the one I acquired lately, she would have buttoned her shoes, gartered her stockings, and would not have shown the bad quality of her corset cover under her wide-opened robe-de-chambre. If she only knew how ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... shoulders, on which they were loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for the partial development, on all possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of the back, of a corset, or a pair of stays, in colour a dead green. Being always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's perfections and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... the water we caught sturgeon, and a very extraordinary kind of fish. It resembles the trout, with this difference, that its mouth is larger. Near its nose—which is smaller, as are also the eyes—is a large bone, shaped like a woman's corset-bone, three fingers wide and a cubit long, at the end of which is a disk as wide as one's hand. This frequently causes it to fall backward when it leaps out of the water." This was the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... have a fair chance. And she dressed herself as if for a ball; she brought intentionally into evidence two hillocks of such snowy whiteness that the whitest linen neckerchief would have paled before them; indeed, these fruits of love stood out, without a wrinkle, over her corset, like two beautiful apples, and made one's mouth water, so exquisite were they. This noble lady, who was one of those who rouse one's manhood, had a smile ready on her lips for the old fellow. Vieux par-Chemins, dressed in garments of coarse ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... little girlie!" said the newcomer, panting from the climb upstairs, and turning a cold, fresh-colored cheek for Susan's kiss. She took off a long coat, displaying beneath, a black walking- skirt, an elaborate high collar, and a view of shabby corset and shabby corset-cover between. "Ma wanted butter," she explained, with a pleasant, rueful smile, "and I just slipped into anything to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... 1.—Remove impediments to respiration. Remove collar, loosen all waist bands and cords, unhook corset or cut the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... rustling of rats that played among the rib cages, sat atop crania, scuttled behind shin-bones. Brett picked his way, stepping over imitation pearl necklaces, zircon rings, plastic buttons, hearing aids, lipsticks, compacts, corset stays, prosthetic devices, rubber heels, wrist watches, lapel watches, pocket watches with ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... and cotton that obliterated every sign of sex and made it impossible to image the existence of a fleshy reality beneath the bulk of cloth. Rows of filigree buttons glittered on the cuffs of her jacket; on her breast, crushed flat by a monastic corset which seemed made of iron, shone a triple chain of gold with its enormous links; from beneath the kerchief worn on the head hung her heavy braids tied with ribbons. On the bench, serving as a cushion for her voluminous body, made bulky by skirts, lay the abrigais, the feminine ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... were hung fresh fish, and when dried they are stowed away with the wappatoo roots under the beds. The dress of the men was like that of the people above; but the women were clad in a peculiar manner, the robe not reaching lower than the hip, and the body being covered in cold weather by a sort of corset of fur, curiously plaited, and reaching from the arms to the hip: added to this was a sort of petticoat, or, rather, tissue of white cedar bark, bruised or broken into small strands and woven into a girdle by several cords of the same material. Being ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and other ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... labels. Most of 'em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet's nest and half of an old corset-cover. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... here it is—no, here— "Kiss them. Eustacia hung her head; Whereat he said, 'Eustacia dear'— And sweetly low Eustacia said:" (Continued on page 17.) Here, just between the corset ad. And that of Smithers' Canderine. (Eustacia ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... Corset Ankle Supports With Removable Bones The only real support for weak or sprained ankles Men's, Ladies' and Misses'. Price, per pair $1.00 Children's. Price per pair .50 Made in Tan or Black Leather. When ordering state size ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... trying to find a rhyme for alfalfa, maybe. And where would you be, you old skate? If the Louise of me had been developed at the expense of the Billy of me, and I'd taken to making battenburg doilies with butterflies in the corners, and embroidering corset covers till I put my eyes out, and writing poetry on Sundays when mommie wouldn't let me sew. I wonder if Ward— Maybe he'd have liked me better if I'd lived up to the Louise and cut out the Billy part. I'd be ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... more sublimated than the exquisite of the nineteenth century. The dandy is of modern date; but there is some polish on him—suppose it be on his boots alone. Shape and make are attended to by him; witness the Cumberland corset, and his making what he can of every body. Then, again, he must have a smattering of French, and affect to be above old England. When he smokes, he does it from vanity, to show his ecume de mer pipe. He may have a gold snuff-box ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and after a while it feels loose, and you say it certainly is loose. I will give a simple rule by which you may know whether your clothing is loose enough or not. Unfasten every article of clothing; dress, corset, skirt-bands, everything. Now breathe in slowly until every air-cell is full. It may take some practice to do this, but persevere until you find the chest elevated and filled to its utmost extent. It should swell out at the sides along the line of the insertion of the diaphragm. ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... MENSTRUATION.—It is also an opportune time to demonstrate to what extent serious results may follow mistakes in dressing. The habit of permitting growing girls to constrict the waist, to bind and pull the abdomen by too tight garters, or too tight corset, is wrong, and no mother should permit it. In another part of the book, this matter is taken up more fully, but if it is explained to the girl while she is considering the subject of menstruation, she may more quickly and more fully appreciate ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... their shadows on the transparent whiteness of her cheeks. Over her neck and breast of ivory flowed the golden waves of her magnificent hair, which had come down at the time of her fall. When, as they unlaced her satin corset, less soft, less fresh, less white than the virgin form beneath, which lay like a statue of alabaster in its covering of lace and lawn, one of the horrible hags felt the arms and shoulders of the young girl with her large, red, horny, and chapped hands. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... corset which mother held in her hand was sent flying up the stairs after the boy, who in three jumps was gone and up above. The others lay laughing in bed when Bertje told them that he had seen Horieneke all in white, with a bunch of red-gold ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... tragedy. They were neither comic nor tragic, but modest and charming. There was also a small shop-keeper, covered with jewels. She sat very rigid, far forward on the bench, compressed into a terrible corset which forced her breast and back into the humps of a punchinello; her legs hanging just short of the floor. Her daughter paced up and down the long room like a colt snorting impatiently to be put through its paces. She had the beauty of a classic type, without spot or blemish, but her joints ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... I heard him explode. "Confound it! This is no place for petticoats, Baron! And as for that Yankee ornithologist, he's hung himself with the Countess's corset—string—yes, he has! Don't tell me, Baron! The young idiot was all right until the Countess looked at him, I tell you. Gad! how she crumpled him up with those blue eyes of hers! What the devil do women come into such committees for? Eh? It's an outrage, I tell ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... think, Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink. She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid Will not scorn with me this jail-bird trade, Pets some fox-eyed boy who turns the trick, Tho' he win a button or a stick, Pencil, garter, ribbon, corset-lace— HIS the glory, MINE is ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... to the joy of taking in your clothes, I have not experienced it. And when you find your corset coming closer and closer together (I advise a front lace, so this can be watched), and then the day you realize that you will have to stitch in a tuck or get ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... one point, the conversation suddenly took a peculiar turn. It came about through Mrs. Dawes mentioning that her aunt, who died from eating tinned lobster, used to work in a corset shop in Wych Street. When she said that, The Agent, whose right eye appeared to survey the ceiling, whilst his left eye looked over the other side ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... stolid, almost stupid; he could not but note again her full young figure, her well-shaped, well-poised head, and her regular features, and the pity of it seemed all the greater by reason thereof. He tried to visualize her perfectly groomed, clad in a smart gown molded over a well-fitting corset, with her feet properly shod and her hair dressed—but the task was beyond him. Probably she had never worn a corset, never seen a pair of silk stockings. He thought, too, of what was in store for her and wondered how she would fit into the new world she was about ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... been broken near the center by a high apartment building, and another still higher rose like a cliff just back of the house in which Roger lived. Still others, and many factory lofts, reared shadowy bulks on every hand. From the top of one an enormous sign, a corset pictured forth in lights, flashed out at regular intervals; and from farther off, high up in the misty haze of the night, could be seen the gleaming pinnacle where hour by hour that great bell slowly boomed the time away. Yes, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... women by punishments alone. They are eternally tempted to folly, yet snubbed the moment they would be wise. A million shops spread their nets, and entice them by their direst foible. Their very mothers—for want of medical knowledge in the sex—clasp the fatal, idiotic corset on their growing bodies, though thin as a lath. So the girl grows up, crippled in the ribs and lungs by her own mother; and her life, too, is in stays—cabined, cribbed, confined: unless she can paint, or act, or write novels, every ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... playing in Sarah Jane's cabin, she, however, being in happy ignorance of the fact. Her large stays, worn to the preaching the night before, were hanging on the back of a chair. "Ain't I glad I don' have to wear no corset when I puts on long pants?" remarked Billy, pointing to the article. "Ain't that a big one? It's twice's big's ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... Always corsetless, she was not straight-laced. Given the attraction and with it the incentive, and that tam-o'-shanter might have gone flying over the windmill. The tam was very safe. There was no incentive and, though there was no moral corset either, she was temperamentally unable to go poaching on another's preserves. Barring the chimerical, that any girl may consider and most girls do, she was straight as a string. A shabby old man had no need ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... was badly cut. Instead of holding himself upright with an elastic corset, he felt that he was cooped up inside a hideous shirt-collar; he hung his dejected head without resistance on the part of a limp cravat. What woman could guess that a handsome foot was hidden by the clumsy boots which he had brought from ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the corset must be nothing but a belt, but with as much hip length as the wearer finds convenient ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... white linen petticoat wid tuckers at de hem, just a little long, to show good and white 'long wid de blue of de skirt and de red of de underskirt. Dese all come up to my waist and was held together by de string dat held my bustle in place. All dis and my corset was hid by de snow white pleated pique bodice, dat drapped gracefully from my shoulders. 'Round my neck was a string of green jade beads. I wore red stockin's and my foots was stuck in soft, black, cloth, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... comely person already assembled. The simpler yet more manly fashions he had taken from the provinces were now exchanged for an attire worthy the kinsman of the great minister of a court unparalleled, since the reign of William the Red King, for extravagant gorgeousness of dress. His corset was of the finest cloth, sown with seed pearls; above it the lawn shirt, worn without collar, partially appeared, fringed with gold; over this was loosely hung a super-tunic of crimson sarcenet, slashed and pounced with a profusion of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... platter. She saw that Al and her father were served. Then she went back to the kitchen, and the thud of her iron was heard as she deftly fluted the ruffles of the crepe blouse. Floss appeared when the meal was half eaten, her hair shiningly coiffed, the pink ribbons of her corset cover showing under her thin kimono. She poured herself a cup of tea and drank it in little quick, nervous gulps. She looked deliriously young, and fragile and appealing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the flimsy garment ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... in a corset which she wore only once a week, walked along erect, with her squeezed-in waist, her broad shoulders and prominent hips, swinging herself a little. She wore a hat trimmed with flowers, made by a milliner at Yvetot, and displayed the back of her full, round, supple neck, reddened by ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... growing stout; and if a young lady begins to round into proportions like the women in Titian's and Giorgione's pictures, she is distressed above measure, and begins to make secret inquiries into reducing diet, and to cling desperately to the strongest corset-lacing as her only hope. It would require one to be better educated than most of our girls are, to be willing to look like the Sistine Madonna or the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Hoskins was not prepared for. She had put on a gown of her own making,—the secret toil of many a long night,—amateurishly fashioned from some cheap yellow calico the doctor had sent her, yet fitting her wonderfully, and showing every curve of her graceful figure. Unaccented by a corset,—an article she had never known,—even the lines of the stiff, unyielding calico had a fashion that was nymph-like and suited her unfettered limbs. Doctor Ruysdael was profoundly moved. Though a philosopher, he was practical. He found himself ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... suspected by the police, who took him for a girl dressed in boy's clothes, and threatened to arrest him. When he was compelled to put on male attire he consoled himself with wearing a woman's chemise and corset underneath. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... arrival in France his comrade called him only Mademoiselle Fifi. This nickname was bestowed upon him on account of his coquettish style of dressing and manners, his slender waist, which looked as if it were laced in a corset, his pale face on which a nascent mustache could hardly be seen, and also on account of the habit he had acquired, in order to express his supreme contempt for persons and things, of using continually the French locution: "Fi! fi donc!" which he pronounced ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... plain woman of genius by the ghost of David Hume.' Herself, too, has been variously described: as 'An Apotheosis of Pupil-Teachery'; as 'George Sand plus Science and minus Sex'; as 'Pallas with prejudices and a corset'; as 'the fruit of a caprice of Apollo for the Differential Calculus.' The comparison of her admirable talent to 'not the imperial violin but the grand ducal violoncello' seems ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... accomplish almost anything within the power of human capacity, for girls have to study under all sorts of disadvantages that boys do not have to contend with. Hang a hoop-skirt on a boy's hips; lace him up in a corset; hang pounds of clothing and trailing skirts upon him; puff him out with humps and bunches behind; pinch his waist into a compass that will allow his lungs only half their breathing capacity; load his head down with superfluous ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... lot for a victim before it stops. She is also provided with a caudal appendage that ends in a patent fly-brush. This she uses to wrap around the neck of the milkmaid to prevent her getting away before she has a chance to kick her health corset off and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Marguerite de Valois herself, "the nuptials took place a few days afterwards with such triumph and magnificence as none others of my quality; the King of Navarre and his troop having changed their mourning for very rich and fine clothes, and I being dressed royally, with crown and corset of tufted ermine, all blazing with crown-jewels, and the grand blue mantle with a train four ells long borne by three princesses, the people choking one another down below to see us pass." The marriage was celebrated on the 18th of August, by the Cardinal of Bourbon, in front ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... assisting Lesbia to spend the hundred pounds which her grandmother had sent her for the replenishment of her well-provided wardrobe. It is astonishing how little way a hundred pounds goes among the dressmakers, corset-makers, and shoemakers of Lutetia. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... baleen? It so combines lightness, elasticity, and flexibility, that nothing yet invented adapts itself so perfectly to all the requirements of the fashionable corset. Whalebone whips are made from single pieces of baleen seven or eight feet long. A whalebone horsewhip costs from fifteen to eighteen dollars and will outlast a dozen cheaper persuaders. The Sairy Gamp umbrella of the last ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the eyes of her family and friends with a genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of all her days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing, manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and her corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her appearance was long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain, nor was she particularly well satisfied with herself when it was done. That about one-fifth of ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... knees beside her, and loosened, as well as I was able, her dress and corset; but while I was thus engaged, a grasp descended ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... apparel not only goes beyond that of the modern man in the degree in which it argues exemption from labor; it also adds a peculiar and highly characteristic feature which differs in kind from anything habitually practiced by the men. This feature is the class of contrivances of which the corset is the typical example. The corset is, in economic theory, substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitality and rendering her permanently and obviously unfit for work. It is true, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... get away, for he feared his mother's plaint for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills now sewed up in the buxom Leah's corset. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... provenance, with the exception of a kind having a cross-arm like the halberd commonly used in China from the seventh century before Christ. Yamato armour affords little assistance to the archaeologist: it bears no particularly close resemblance to any type familiar elsewhere. There was a corset made of sheet iron, well rivetted. It fastened in front and was much higher behind than before, additioned protection for the back being provided by a lattice-guard which depended from the helmet and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind, And be safe in my corset-lacing. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... You 'cannot agree'! You have seen her when she is laced in her stage costume, when she prinks and prattles, with the paint, and the powder, and her best corset on. It is I who am 'behind the scenes,' mon ami, not you. I see her dirty peignoir and her curl rags. At four o'clock in the afternoon. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... marry, I'll bet a hoss. If Redruth had married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a lock of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort of articles is as good as a husband to some women. I'd say she played out a lone hand. I don't blame no woman for old man Redruth's abandonment of barber shops ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... deformity to an instructed eye. Women must have received their notions of small waists from ignorant dress-makers. If young ladies could hear the remarks made on these small waists by men generally, and especially men of taste, they would never again show themselves till they had loosened their corset-laces and enlarged their belts." ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... didn't want me to leave. I wouldn't tell her why. She said, 'I speck you going to get married.' She gave me a nice white silk dress. Mrs. Drennand made it. My owner, Miss Leila Nash, lend me one of her chemisette, a corset cover, and a dress had ruffles around the bottom. It was wide. She never married. I borrowed my veil from a colored woman that had used it. Mr. Rollwage (dead now but was a lawyer at Forrest City) gave Scott a tie and white vest and lend him his watch ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... your eyes," says Nikolay Timofeitch in dismay. "What's that for? Come to the corset department, I'll screen you —it ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the beach in her girlish days, of exquisite purity. Her education, I grieve to say, had been most shamefully neglected; her mother, though a most exemplary woman, both as a Christian and a member of society, had never tied her up in a fashionable corset to improve her figure, nor sent her to a fashionable boarding school to improve her mind; the consequence was that she knew nothing of the piano,—Virgil seems to have had the gift of prophecy with regard to this part of modern education, when ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... a seam hemmed down to the goods to protect the raw edge. It is usually made in night dresses, drawers, corset covers, etc. Baste with the piece farthest from the worker extended one-eighth of an inch beyond the other and sewed with the grain of the goods, beginning at the widest part of any bias. Press the seam with the nail on the right ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... her pink-and-gray room with its soft lights. And Harriet herself conformed to the picture. She took a lesson from the New York modistes, and wore trailing black gowns. She strapped her thin figure into the best corset she could get, and had her black hair marcelled and dressed high. And, because she was a lady by birth and instinct, the result was not incongruous, but ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... doctor's office near by but did not find him; four other women employed in the house assisted mademoiselle to lift Germinie up and carry her to the bed in her mistress's room, on which they laid her after cutting her corset lacings. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... to the English watering-places, quite unparalleled in the 'recollection of the oldest inhabitants.' There were blooming widows in every stage of grief and woe, from the becoming cap to the fashionable corset and ball flounce—widows who would never forget the dear deceased, or think of any other man—unless he had at least five thousand a year. Lovely girls, who didn't care a farthing if the man was 'only handsome'; and smiling ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... not entirely rid herself of the notion that she was dreaming. A lace petticoat hanging over the back of a chair and a brocaded pink corset over another contributed to the illusion. She could not yet believe they were hers, any more than was the twenty-dollar creation in the hat box on the shelf ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... will, squire; gals, spread yeourselves areound and squat; take care o' yeour corset strings, and keep deth-ly still. Wall; neow, yeou all sot? Hain't none o' ye been in the pedlin' business, I guess; wall, no matter, tho' it's dread-ful pleasant sometimes: then ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... from her corset two notes of five hundred francs each, which were fastened by a pin to her chemise; then she sat down and offered them to her brother's defender. The rector gave the lawyer a flashing look which was ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... did everything as I desired, indeed, more, for she took off her petticoat and little corset, saying she would be cooler thus. So, following her example, I took off my trousers, saying she would be better able to see and play with my doodle. When these preliminaries were accomplished, I drew her on my knees—first pulling up her shift ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... modernness of their lines, which are as different as possible from those of the statues of classic Greece. The waist is exceedingly slender, and altogether 'the lines adopted are those considered ideal by the modern corset-maker rather ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... came along to avoid a rebuff, and having the satisfaction of knowing that she was ready before Brigitte. As for the latter, already furious at finding herself late, she had another cause for exasperation. The event of the day seemed to require a corset, a refinement which she usually discarded. The unfortunate maid, whose duty it was to lace her and to discover the exact point to which she was willing to be drawn in, alone knew the terrors and storms ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... herself in condition is making a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... correct, for it fitted her neatly, save at the waist, which was even more than an inch too large, notwithstanding the fact that she had never worn such a corset as the well-formed Marie Bourgette ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... thinks that Cinesias, who was tall and slight of build, wore a kind of corset of lime-wood to support his ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... better, and when she has to confess that she has never done anything outside of her own house, and nothing there except agreeable things, such as entertaining friends who next week will entertain her, and embroidering 'insets' for corset-covers for dainty ladies who already have corset-covers enough to fill a store-window,—I wonder if she will be able to put it over on the heavenly doorkeeper that 'the Doctor would not let her.' If all I hear ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... that an attendant handed him Juve drew out the garments of the dead woman. The shoes were by a good maker, the silk stockings with open-work embroidery, the chemise and the drawers were of fine linen and the corset was well cut. ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... Wednesday night, By Jove you can do nothing right. I hear (perhaps the story false is,) From Almacks, that he never waltzes With Lady Anne or Lady Biddy, Twirling till he's in Love, or giddy. The girl a pigmy, he a giant, His cravat stiff, her corset pliant. There, while some jaded couple stops, The rest go round like humming tops. Each in the circle with its neighbour Sharing alternate rest and labour; While many a gentle chaperon As the fair Dervises spin on, Sighs with ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the skin, she looked at her handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin did to make his hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved. She put on new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset straight, without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of having a new gown, well made, which ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... landing in front of her bedroom door as the housemaid conducted me aloft. Making due allowance for the youth-and-beauty-destroying effects of the kimono, curling "kids," and cold cream, and substituting in their stead a snug corset, an undulated pompadour, and a powdered countenance, respectively, I knew about what to look for in the daylight Miss Jamison. A short, plump, blonde lady in the middle forties, I predicted to myself. The ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... mass of frill and flounce, a horrible and not dramatic spectacle of abandonment; decencies gone down before desire, the heart ruptured and broken through its walls. In such a moment of soul dishabille and her own dishabille of bosom bulging above the tight lacing of her corset-line as she lay prone, her mouth sagging and wet with tears, her lips blowing outward in bubbles, a picture, in fact, to gloss over, Mae Munroe dragged herself closer, flinging her arms about the knees of Mr. Zincas, sobbing through ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... stocks that you've been laying in of late wouldn't come amiss. There's that lavender satin waist, too, you bought at Jerome's the other day. I know I should look perfectly killing in it; and—oh! ye Hiltonites!—she has just bought six of the sweetest corset covers you ever laid eyes on; think of it!—six! She could spare three just as well as not, and I'm sure she has at least a dozen pairs of silk stockings, while"- -with a doleful sigh—"I don't own a blessed one. Then there are ribbons and laces, fans and handkerchiefs galore. Don't ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... worsted. It is cut very low in the neck, leaving a part of the breast bare, and descends to a point below the knee. A cotton cord tied around the waist keeps the chemise to the figure, and serves as girdle and corset at the same time. The space between the top of the chemise and the belt is used as a receptacle for cigars, money, and generally for all the small objects that elsewhere people carry in their pockets. The rebozo is worn over the head and shoulders, with the ends thrown back over the left ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of Mrs. Fox-Moore's gowns, as allow the funereal dulness of them to overflow on to her brown neck. It even cast an added shadow on her sallow cheek. The figure of the older woman, gaunt and thin enough, announced the further constriction of the corset. By way of revenge the sharp shoulder-blades poked the corset out till it defined a ridge in the black silk back. In front, too, the slab-like figure declined co-operation with the corset, and withdrew, leaving a hiatus that the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... you have on, which compresses the center of the body, making you look a great deal fatter than you really are, must be taken off, and you must have a corset which any dress maker can fit to you—a corset for the lower part of the abdomen, which will raise this ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... rabbits of the laboratory and the professor's chair that had been preparing the ground for the present war with their sophistries and their unblushing effrontery! Their guilt was far greater than that of the Herr Lieutenant of the tight corset and the gleaming monocle, who in his thirst for strife and slaughter was simply and logically working out ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mine," said Pete Murphy, "at night—all the corset and whisky signs flashing, the streets jammed with benzine-buggies, the sidewalks crowded with boobs, and every lobster palace filled to the roof with ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... excess of size? Is there no harmless potion or powder by which a city may lose a thousand inhabitants a day, as the superabounding fair loses a pound of beauty? Is there nothing for New York analogous to rolling on the floor, to the straight-front corset, to the sugarless, starchless diet? Come, you must not deny us all hope! How did Boston manage to remain so small? What elixirs, what exercises, did she take or use? Surely she did not do it all by reading and thinking!" Our friend continued somewhat ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... England journal: the Roumanian lady who had sent them tickets for her tragedy, an elderly French gentleman who, on the strength of a week's stay at Folkestone, translated English fiction for the provincial press, a lady from Wichita, Kansas, who advocated free love and the abolition of the corset, a clergyman's widow from Torquay who had written an "English Ladies' Guide to Foreign Galleries" and a Russian sculptor who lived on nuts and was "almost certainly" an anarchist. It was this nucleus, and its outer ring of musical, architectural ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... living. I went by train to see a friend in the country, and after passing through a patent mucilage, some more hams, a South African Investment Company, a Parisian millinery firm, and a comic journal, I alighted at a new and original kind of corset. On my return journey the road almost continuously ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... this done systematically when my little French friend—I call her Mile. Henriette now—came to the door to say that she simply "could not stand another day of it." She had put, she said, all the ready money they had inside her corset, and a little box which contained all her dead father's decorations also, and she was ready to go. She took out the box and showed the pretty jeweled things,—his cross of the Legion d'Honneur, his Papal decoration, and several foreign orders,—her ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... made up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig on—and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... taking place around me. Says Corder, struggling with his pack, "Bann, will you help me into my corset." Pickle says to Reardon (out of David's hearing) "Ten cents for a bum piece of pie that you have to eat with your hands! That gets my goat." And just now has come a hoot from every part of the camp when from I company, in line to start and loading ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... a man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that woman,—who knows that stays will bend,—seizes her corset by the lower end, and bends ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... But, if it's goin' t' comfort you any, there's that corset cover you made me last Christmas. I ain't never wore it; I ain't dared to with all them trimmin's an' lace insertion, an' me s' bony here an' there. You can have it an' willin', my dear, an' ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... a "pendulous abdomen." Such a condition can be prevented by the use of several appliances, and the device best suited to the case should be chosen. Those who have never become accustomed to corsets will probably find a corset-waist or an abdominal supporter the most comfortable and useful. But the average young woman who has previously employed a sensible, well made, and loosely fitting corset need make no change until the third or fourth month of pregnancy. From ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... he continued, "to observe the powerful tonic effect of clothes. A woman patient told me once that the moral support, afforded by a well-fitting corset was inconceivable to the mind of a mere man. She said that a corset is to a woman what a hat is to a man— it prepares for any emergency, enables one to meet life on equal terms, and even to face a rebellious cook or janitor with 'that ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... continued; "be calm, and when the filipony (peddlers) come, buy yourself a pretty handkerchief." He then gave her a ruble and walked away. Anielka, after concealing the coin in her corset, ran quickly back to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... CORSET.—At Sydenham, Ontario (it is stated), the Corset has been declared to be "incompatible with Christianity!" If some of our fashionable dames uttered their innermost feelings, they would doubtless reply, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... proceeding outwards, came the corset, a most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had specially created toothless ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... and powder; the domestic animals at play, wild birds singing, and children brought up to colder water than their fathers. It should have been our business to pursue health till we no longer needed the interior of the chemist's shop, the optician's store, the hairdresser's, the corset-maker's, the thousand and one emporiums which patch and prink us, promoting our fancies and disguising the ravages which modern life makes in our figures. Our ambition should have been to need so little that, with our present scientific knowledge, we should have ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... explained to me by my friend, the ci-devant Comtesse, who at the same time assured me that young French women, clad in this airy manner, brave all the rigour of winter. "A simple piece of linen, slightly laced before," said she, "while it leaves the waist uncompressed, answers the purpose of a corset. If they put on a robe, which is not open in front, they dispense with petticoats altogether; their cambric chemise having the semblance of one, from its skirt being trimmed with lace. When attired for a ball, those who dance, as you may observe, commonly ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... dressing-gown and corset and set herself to the task of pinching and mauling her throat, arms and shoulders, to remove superfluous flesh, and strengthen muscles and fibres to resist the flabby tendencies which time produces. Then she used the ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... advance of knowledge, and improved treatment of specific ailments. The danger is apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, who has only one hobby and traces every human ill to strong liquor or tobacco, or the corset, or taxation of personal property, or denial of universal suffrage, or the eating of meat, or the want of the centralization of nearly all initiative and interest and property in the state. The tendency of the accomplished specialist ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of this modification of respiration is the change in dress which is usually made about that time. The young girl is now becoming a woman, and must acquire the art of lacing, wearing a corset, "stays," and sundry other contrivances by means of which to produce a "fine form" by distorting and destroying all natural grace and beauty in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... harmonious outlines of the figure to advantage, thanks to the large openings in the overcoat. The surcoat, kept back on the shoulders by two narrow bands, became a sort of wide and trailing skirt, which majestically draped the lower part of the body; and, lastly, the external corset was invented, which was a kind of short mantle, falling down before and behind without concealing any of the fine outlines of the bust. This new article of apparel, which was kept in its place in the middle of the chest by a steel busk encased in some rich lace-work, was generally made of fur in ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... resumed her ordinary calico gown, but such was the impression left upon Renshaw's fancy that she seemed to wear it with a new grace. At any other time he might have recognized the change as due to a new corset, which strict veracity compels me to record Rosey had adopted for the first time that morning. Howbeit, her slight coquetry seemed to have passed, for she closed the open trunk with a return of her old listless air, and sitting ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... she had received from it, on the 1st of January, 1836, a large collection of presents. There were in all no less than fifty-nine articles, among which were the following: a dress-box, a pair of boots, a thermometer, a carbine-carrier, a pair of trousers and a corset. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... poor attempt at dignity, and then collapsed into whining but hopeful lying. She was dressed in an old sunburnt frock. Her hair was tousled, her shoes untied, and a corset-string was hanging outside her skirt. Her front teeth were out, and the red blotches on her face told the ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... crepe de chine lingerie, and hand-woven hose of spun silk. There were boxes upon boxes, and bureau drawers and closet shelves already filled up with hand-embroidered and lace-trimmed creations-chemises and corset-covers, night-robes of "handkerchief linen" lawn, lace handkerchiefs and veils, corsets of French coutil, dressing-jackets of pale-coloured silks, and negligees of soft batistes, trimmed with Valenciennes lace, or even ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... inventor. He offered the sum of twelve hundred and fifty dollars for the machine which Amasa Howe had brought with him, and agreed to pay Elias fifteen dollars per week if he would enter his service, and adapt the machine to his business of umbrella and corset making. As this was his only hope of earning a livelihood, Elias accepted the offer, and, upon his brother's return to the United States, sailed for England. He remained in Mr. Thomas's employ for about eight months, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... what to send you as a Christmas gift, and it seemed a hard problem to solve. I fear you will wonder at what I am sending; but, knowing that you are nearly thirteen years old and must be growing very fast, I have decided to send you a corset. I hope you will like and appreciate it enough ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... to him, she is doubly beautiful. Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie. You may talk about the value of a noble heart beating in an empty corset, shining out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable, where the good things in a woman's life are given in exchange. Janet Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that. And of the qualities of noble-heartedness, Coralie possessed but very few. Her disposition ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... even the least prudish by the abandon of her dancing and the tenuity of her costume, which, we are told, consisted of "a single embroidered garment, fastened beneath the bosom, without the shadow of a corset and without sleeves." And at Naples, where King Joachim Murat gave her a regal reception, with a sequel of fetes and gala-performances in honour of the wife of the Regent of England, she attended a rout, at the Teatro San Carlo, so lightly ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... parents who believe that to play cards or go to theater is the way of Satan find their children leaving home to do these very things. Everywhere mothers wonder why daughters like short skirts, powder and perhaps rouge, when they were brought up on the corset, crinoline and the bustle; and they rebel against the indictment passed out broadcast by their children. "You are old-fashioned; this is the year 1921." When children grow up, their wills clash with their parents', even in the sweetest, and most loving of homes. Behind many a girl's anxiety ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... to ourselves, for though her aunt was present she was only there for decency's sake. After breakfast we resolved to have a ride, and she changed her clothes before me, but also before her aunt. She first put on her leather breeches, then let her skirts fall, took off her corset, and donned a jacket. With seeming indifference I succeeded in catching a glimpse of a magnificent breast; but the sly puss knew how much my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... must do, Roberta, to disguise your roundness of a young woman? All is lost!" I said to myself in despair. Then a thought came to me. I had never been habited in a corset in my life on account of a prejudice entertained to that garment by my Nannette, but I bethought me to remove that shirt and also the silk one underneath and swath about me one of the heavy towels of the bath. Immediately ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... korespondi. Correspondence korespondado. Corridor koridoro. Corrode mordeti. Corrupt putrigi. Corrupt (bribe) subacxeti. Corrupt (vicious) malvirta. Corruption putro. Corsage korsajxo. Corsair korsaro. Corse malvivulo. Corset korseto. Cortege sekvantaro. Cossack Kozako. Cosmopolite kosmopolita. Cosmography kosmografio. Cost kosto. Costiveness mallakso. Costly multekosta. Costume kostumo. Cosy komforta. Cot liteto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up a loop of worn ribbon. "Straight front corset," she observed, flushing, "makes a nice pocket for almost everything." She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills. "Two hundred and twelve dollars," she said, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... office to his son and died in the "angelica vestis" of the tertiary order; and the "beatified" Duchess who had sold her jewels to buy corn for the poor during the famine of 1670, and had worn a hair-shirt under a corset that seemed stiff enough to serve all the purposes of bodily mortification. So the file descended, the colours fading, the shadows deepening, till it reached a baby porporato of the last century, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... corset for her, for the same purpose as the King's under-waistcoat, without her knowledge; but she would not make use of it; all my entreaties, all my tears, were in vain. "If the factions assassinate me," she replied, "it will be a fortunate event for me; they will deliver me ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... staying. Can anything more disgraceful be imagined? They all console me by saying there is no one in Baton Rouge who could possibly wear my dresses without adding a considerable piece to the belt. But that is nonsense. Another pull at the corset strings would bring them easily to the size I have been reduced by nature and bones. Besides, O horror! Suppose, instead, they should let in a piece of another color? That would annihilate me! Pshaw! I do not care for the dresses, if they had only left ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... anything," said Mr. Marrier. "Very good amateur actress. Goes about a great deal. Her mother was on the stage. Married a wealthy wholesale corset-maker." ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Slipslop up, and, after refreshing her spirits with a small cordial, which she kept in her corset, she began in the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... be necessary to simplify the lessons; in others, an increased number of articles may be prepared in the time allotted. Should the apron and cap not be needed for the cooking class, an undergarment (corset ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... Madame Arconati, has shown me generous love; a Contadina, whom I have known this summer, hardly less. Every Sunday she came in her holiday dress, a beautiful corset of red silk, richly embroidered, rich petticoat, nice shoes and stockings, and handsome coral necklace, on one arm an immense basket of grapes, on the other a pair of live chickens to be eaten by me for her sake ("per amore mio"), and wanted no present, no reward: it was, as she said, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... pleased him. He took off her furs. Her skirt was of a plum colour so dark that it was almost black, the material thick and supple, outlining her figure, squeezing her arms, making an hourglass of her waist, accentuating the curve of her hips and the bulge of her corset. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... her beauty improved, when decorated with the graceful ornaments worn by the ladies of this country! She was dressed in white muslin, lined with rose-coloured taffeta. Her small and elegant shape was displayed to advantage by her corset, and the lavish profusion of her light tresses were carelessly blended with her simple head-dress. Her fine blue eyes were filled with an expression of melancholy: and the struggles of passion, with which her heart was agitated, flushed her cheek, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... that she had formerly put into the house. She was determined that her cousin should be as well dressed as Madame Garceland's little girl. She bought the child fashionable boots of bronzed kid like those the little Tiphaines wore, very fine cotton stockings, a corset by the best maker, a dress of blue reps, a pretty cape lined with white silk,—all this that she, Sylvie, might hold her own against the children of the women who had rejected her. The underclothes were quite in keeping with ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... she plunged and found the shoes. Seeing the house still standing, she thought of other things she might need, grasped her tooth brushes and thrust them in her corset. She would certainly need a comb. She added that—a powder bag and lace collar lying on the bureau were also saved. Her hair was tumbling down. She thought of hairpins and tucking ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... a thieving excursion to the stores the female shop-lifter carefully and systematically prepares her clothing, and sees that it is in proper form and ready for business. This she does by first putting on a corset made especially for the purpose, with broad, strong bands which pass over the shoulders. Between her legs she arranges a large bag or receptacle made of some extremely strong cloth, which is suspended from the corset by a stout band running around the waist. Her dress or frock covers this, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... beholder's eye Your late denuded bindings lie, Subsiding slowly where they fell, A disinvested citadel; The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe, The Dutchman's breeches frilled below. Those that the lover notes to note, And ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson |
