A pad stuffed with cotton, feathers, bran, &c., worn by ladies for the double purpose of giving a greater rotundity or prominence to the hips, and setting off the smallness of the waist.
Some of the ladies had bustles on that would have literally throwed the whiskers, and the thing that wore them, entirely in the shade. I never knowed what a bustle was before. Would you be1ieve it, Mr. Thompson, that I saw bustles up to Athens, that, if they'd been made out of real flesh and blood, would broke the back of any gall in Georgia to carry 'em? It's a fact. Why, some of them looked jist as much out of proportion as a bundle of fodder does tied to the handle of a pitchfork. If anything would make me sue for a divorce, it would be to see my wife toting about sich a monstrous pack on her back as some of them I saw up to Athens.--Maj. Jones's Courtship, p. 168.