[1] During this period the ingenuity of man came to woman's rescue, by the invention of an interesting, and, judging by its popularity, exceedingly serviceable contrivance known as a dress elevator, which enabled ladies to instantly elevate their enormous trains when they came to a particularly muddy and filthy crossing. When we examine the prevailing styles which marked this period, we are struck with amazement at the power exerted by fashion over the intellect and judgment of society. Imagine the shame and humiliation of a woman of fashion, endowed by nature or afflicted by disease with such an unsightly hump on the back as characterized the fashionable toilet of this period! [Illustration: 1870 to 1875: "Suggesting in some instances a toboggan slide; in others, the unseemly hump on the back of a camel."] Toward the end of the seventies, we find another extreme reached, which if possible was more absurd and injurious than those which marked the early days of this decade. This was the period of the tie-back, or narrow skirts and enormous trains. As in 1860 fashion's slaves vied with one another in their effort to cover the largest possible circular space, now their ambitions lay in the direction of the opposite extreme:[2] the skirts must be as narrow as possible even though it greatly impeded walking, for as will be readily observed all free use of the lower limbs was out of the question during the reign of the "tie-back." [2] It was in the midst of the period of the tie-backs that _Harper's Bazar_ published two striking cartoons illustrating the poem given below. One represented a poor man's wife, "The slave of toil," and was pathetically powerful in its fidelity to truth; the other, drawn by the powerful Nast, represented a society lady of the day attired in the reigning tie-back, measuring at the hips a little more than double the width a short distance below the knees. This slave was chained to fashion's column. SISTER SLAVES. You think there is little of kinship between them? Perhaps not in blood, yet there's likeness of soul; And in bondage 'tis patent to all who have seen them That both are fast held under iron control. The simpering girl, with her airs and her graces, Is sister at heart to the hard-working drudge; Two types of to-day, as they stand in their places; Whose lot is the sadder I leave you to judge.