In the last three lines we find the whole essence and spirit of Du Maurier's method. He proved to demonstration again and again that women could dress in the fashion of the moment and be delightful to look at, so long as they were the judicious interpreters and not the Slaves of Mode. If he saw no beauty in the designs of the "Rationalists," and habitually ridiculed the sprawling attitudes, the shapeless garments, and unwholesome languor of the female "æsthetes," he did not spare the monstrosities and barbarities of the ultra-fashionables. The age of lateral expansion had given place to a craze for compression, to the "eel-skin" model. Skirts were so tight in 1875 that Du Maurier suggests that upholsterers should devise a special sort of chair suited to the peculiar exigencies of ladies who can neither stoop nor sit down. Three years later a lady and a hussar officer at a dance are depicted as both equally unable to depart from a rigidly perpendicular attitude. Tight lacing was again in fashion but met with no approval from _Punch_. In 1877 Du Maurier depicts a lady resolutely determined to lace down to the waist measurement of a rival, and _Punch_ quotes with approval Miss Frances P. Cobbe's indictment of the causes which led to the "Little Health of Women." Besides tight lacing the list includes the neglect of exercise, the discouragement of appetite, sentimental brooding over disappointments, the lack of healthy occupation for mind and body, false hair, bonnets that don't protect the head, heavy dragging skirts, high heels and "pull-backs"--a tolerably comprehensive catalogue. _Punch_ renews his attack on tightly-laced pinched-in figures in his Horatian ode to "A Modern Pyrrha" in 1880, and in 1889 Jones, after offering the wasp-waisted Miss Vane tea and strawberries at a garden party, remarks to himself: "By Jove! she takes 'em--she's going to swallow 'em! But where she'll put 'em--goodness knows!" [Illustration: A MODERN WAIST JONES (_to himself, as he offers Miss Vane a cup of tea and some strawberries_): "By Jove! She takes 'em--she's going to swallow 'em! But where she'll _put_ 'em--goodness knows!"] [Illustration: TO UPHOLSTERERS, etc. Now that fashionable skirts are worn so tight that the fair wearers thereof can neither stoop nor sit down, it might be worth somebody's while to devise a chair suited to the peculiar exigencies of the positions.] [Illustration: FASHIONABLE EMULATION LADY (_speaking with difficulty_): "What have you made it round the waist, Mrs. Price?" DRESSMAKER: "Twenty-one inches, ma'am. You couldn't _breathe_ with less!" LADY: "What's Lady Jemima Jones's waist?" DRESSMAKER: "Nineteen-and-a-half just now, ma'am. But her Ladyship's a head shorter than you are, and she's got ever so much thinner since her illness last autumn?" LADY: "Then make it _nineteen_, Mrs. Price, and _I'll_ engage to get into it!"]