Compressure of the feet was with equal strictness forbidden by my judicious father. This vain custom is perhaps not so fatal as the other, but it produces many evils. Coldness of the extremities may certainly exist where nothing of the kind has been practised; but while rejoicing that I, experimentally, know nothing of it, I cannot help recollecting that the bounding pulse which plays so joyously through my veins was never impeded in any part; and feeling this, I would no more expose a girl to one infliction than I would to the other. Do Christian mothers take a sufficiently serious and prayerful view of this subject, as regards their children? Do they weigh, in a balance of God's providing, this necessary provision of clothing, to separate not only what is unseemly for the woman professing godly simplicity, but what is enervating to those physical powers which she is bound to devote to the Lord, and the weakening of which is actual robbery of him? I fear we females are more ready to ask counsel one of another in this matter than of the Lord; or even of our husbands, who, in nine cases out of ten, no doubt would decide against the foolish and pernicious custom. At least, in all my arguments with my own sex, I have found the men invariably siding with me upon this topic. You will be tired of these digressions, my dear friend, but I set out by forewarning you that my opinions would be freely stated; and while touching on a period of mortal life, where the body no less than the mind usually takes its direction for the rest of our pilgrimage, I cannot pass by any thing that appears to me of real importance to either. We will now return to what poets have sung and citizens sighed for, time out of mind--the delights of rural life.