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“There you are mistaken. I have noticed this defect, with much anxiety, ever since you were a child; and having had my attention called to it, have frequently made comparisons, and have found that you are remarkably narrow and flat, and what is more, have a tendency to stoop, which still lessens the size of the cavity in which the lungs play.”

“Well, ma, my clothes are not tight. Just see here.”

Mrs. Beaufort tried her clothes, and found them to be much tighter than in her judgment was good for health.

“You are still unwilling, Amanda, to be governed by your mother, where her wishes come in opposition to your pride or inclinations. I know that you are compressing your chest too much, but you are not willing to yield to my judgment. And yet I prescribe no arbitrary rules, but endeavor to guide you by a rational consideration of true principles. These you will not see; and the consequences that must follow their violation will be the transgressor’s reward.”

“Indeed, indeed, ma, you are too serious. You are frightened at a shadow. No one of my friends enjoys better general health than I do.”

“And so might the graceful maple say of the sturdy oak in the first years of their existence. But long after the first had been humbled beneath the hand of decay, the other would stand with its roots more firmly imbedded in the earth, and its limbs battling the storms as vigorously as ever.”

Amanda made no reply to this, for she was suddenly struck with its force. Still she only pretended to loosen her stays to satisfy her mother, while the lacings remained as tense as ever.

It is unnecessary to trace, step by step, the folly of Amanda Beaufort through a series of years–years that caused her mother much and painful anxiety–up to her twenty-sixth summer, when, as a wife and mother, she was suffering the penalty of her indiscretion, proving too clearly the truth, that the way of transgressors is hard. In spite of all her mother’s warnings and remonstrances, she had continued to expose herself to the night air in damp weather–to attend balls thinly clad, and remain at them to a very late hour, and to lace herself so tightly as to seriously retard the healthy action of the vital organs. At the age of twenty-three she married. A year after, the birth of a child gave her whole system, which had indicated long before its feebleness, a powerful shock, from which the reaction was slow and unsteady. The colour never came back to her cheek, nor the elasticity to her frame. She had so long subjected herself to the pressure of an artificial external support, that she could not leave off her stays without experiencing such a sinking, sickening sensation, as she called it, that she was compelled to continue, however reluctantly, the compression and support of tightly-laced corsets. And from frequently taking cold, through imprudence, the susceptibility had become so great, that the slightest dampness of the feet or the exposure to a light draught of air was sure to bring on a cough of hoarseness. Her nervous system, too, was sadly shattered. Indeed, every indication presented, foreshadowed a rapid and premature decline–consequent, solely, upon her thoughtless imprudence in earlier years.

“Shall I never feel any better, ma?” asked Amanda, one day, as a faint sickness came over her, compelling her to resign her dear little babe into the arms of its nurse, looking up at the same time so earnestly and appealingly into her mother’s face, that Mrs. Beaufort’s heart was touched with unwonted sorrow and tenderness.

“I hope so, Amanda,” was replied, but in a tone that, though meant to encourage, conveyed little hope to the bosom of her child.

“Every time little Anna nurses, I feel so sick and faint, that, sometimes, it seems that I must give up. And yet the thought of letting the dear little angel draw her food from another bosom than mine, makes me fainter and sicker still. Can nothing be done to help me, ma?”