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 whales of the Family _Balaenidae_ solely for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing.

But these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable.

Though sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the thigh.

Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aie, Aie." Then this confounded corset had to be laced with pink ribbons at the back and in front and both lacings demanded unusual suppleness of arms and sense of touch in finger-tips; and when the corset went to the wash the ribbons had to be drawn out, washed, ironed, and threaded again.
From the front of the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet awaiting their prey.