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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75279 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+UGLY-GIRL PAPERS
+
+FROM
+
+HARPERS BAZAR
+]
+
+
+
+
+  _REPRINTED FROM “HARPER’S BAZAR.”_
+
+  THE
+
+  UGLY-GIRL PAPERS;
+
+  OR,
+
+  HINTS FOR THE TOILET.
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  _NEW YORK_:
+  HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
+  FRANKLIN SQUARE.
+
+
+
+
+  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
+  HARPER & BROTHERS,
+  In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+
+  AUNT SUSAN,
+
+  THE DEAR AND HANDSOME OLD LADY WHO NEVER
+  NEEDED ANY OF THESE RECIPES,
+
+  LET ME OFFER MY FIRST BOOK.
+
+
+                                 S. D. P.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+By means of these scattered chapters the writer has come to know women
+better--their traditions, desires, and delights. If through these pages
+women should know themselves and what they may become in regard and
+temper for their lovers, friends, children, and their own sakes, it
+will well reward the pleasant labor which has already met such kind
+appreciation. Begun by chance, to make an agreeable article or two for
+_Harper’s Bazar_, the “Ugly-Girl Papers” were continued by request, and
+have brought the writer into friendly bearings with many of the readers
+of the _Bazar_. To their questions and hints these chapters owe more of
+their value than appears on the surface; and the little book goes out
+hoping to meet, if not new friends, at least some old ones.
+
+The science of the toilet is well-nigh as delicate as that of medicine;
+and as no prescription has yet proved a specific for disease, no recipe
+can reach all cases of complexion. I could wish for this book the
+good-will and consideration of physicians, under whose advice it may be
+hoped its suggestions will approve themselves of wide service.
+
+                                           S. D. P.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+
+  Woman’s Business to be Beautiful.--How to Acquire a Clear
+    Complexion.--Regimen for Purity of the Blood.--Carbonate
+    of Ammonia and Powdered Charcoal.--Stippled Skins.--Face
+    Masks.--Oily Complexions.--Irritations of the
+    Skin.--Lettuce as a Cosmetic.--Cooling
+    Drinks.--Sun-Baths.--Bread and Molasses                       Page 9
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  Care of the Hair.--Children’s Hair.--When to Cut it.--Ammonia
+    Washes.--Glycerine and Ammonia.--Pomades.--How to Brush the
+    Hair.--Cutting the Ends.--German Method of Treating the
+    Hair.--Southernwood Pomade.--Hair-Dyes.--Dyeing the Eyebrows
+    and Eyelashes.--Superfluous Hair.--Depilatories.--Washes for
+    the Eyelashes and Eyebrows                                        22
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  Elegance of Manner.--Grace of the Latin Races.--The
+    Secret of Grace.--Gliding Movement.--Calisthenics.--Erectness
+    of Figure.--Shoulder Braces.--How to Acquire Sloping
+    Shoulders.--Care of the Feet.--The Art of Walking.--Picturesque
+    Carriage of Southern Women                                        35
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  N. P. Willis as a Critic of Beauty.--The Perfume of the
+    Presence.--Charm of Good Circulation.--Chills are Incipient
+    Congestion.--Paper Clothing.--Luxuries of the Bath.--A
+    Substitute for Sea-Baths.--To Secure Fragrant Breath.--Delicate
+    Dentifrices.--Fine Cologne.--A List of Fragrance                  48
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  Morals of Paint and Powder.--Antique Toilet Arts.--Washington
+    Ladies.--Making Up the Face.--Whitening the Arms.--Tints of
+    Rouge.--To Make French Rouge.--Milk of Roses.--Greuze
+    Tints.--Coarse Complexions Caused by Powder.--Color for the
+    Lips.--Crystal and Gold Hair Powder.--Dyeing Blonde Wigs.--To
+    Darken the Hair.--Champagne and Black-Walnut Bark.--Doom of the
+    Complexion Artist                                                 59
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  Récamier’s Training.--Diana of Poitiers’ Bath.--High Beauty of
+    Maturity.--The Worth of Beauty.--George Eliot on
+    Complexions.--Dr. Cazenave.--Barley Paste for the
+    Face.--Prescriptions of the Roman Ladies.--To Remove
+    Pimples.--Cascarilla Wash.--Varnish for Wrinkles.--Acetic Acid
+    for Comedones.--To Remove Mask.--Lady Mary Montagu.--Habit of
+    Italian Ladies.--Wash of Vitriol                                  70
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  Shining Pallor.--Lustrous Faces.--Golden Freckles.--Tiger-Lily
+    Spots.--Sun Photographs.--Nitre Removes Freckles.--Old English
+    Prescription.--For Yachting.--Almond-Oil.--Buttermilk as a
+    Cosmetic.--Rosemary and Glycerine.--Lotion for Prickly
+    Heat.--For Musquitoes.--Protecting Hair from Sea
+    Air.--Fashionable Gray Hair.--Dark Eyes and Silver Hair.--To
+    Restore Dark Hair.--Bandoline.--Cold Cream.--Almond Pomade.--For
+    Skin Diseases.--Sulphurous Acid                                   77
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  Service of Beauty.--Not for Vanity, but Perfection.--Eyebrows
+    of Petrarch’s Laura.--Fashionable Baths.--Trimming the
+    Eyelashes.--Luxury of the Toilet.--Its Magnetic Influence.--A
+    Safe Stimulant.--Amateurs of the Toilet.--Cosmetic Gloves.--To
+    Refine the Skin of the Shoulders and Arms.--Sulphate of Quinine
+    for the Hair.--For the Eyebrows and Eyelashes.--A Harmless
+    Dye.--To Remove Sallowness.--A Hint for Stout People.--Perfumed
+    Bathing-powder                                                    86
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  Hope for Homely People.--Two Vital Charms.--The Way to
+    Live.--Sunrise and Open Air.--Bleached by the Dawn.--Live at
+    Sunny Windows.--In Balconies and Parks.--Christiana’s
+    Breakfast.--Brown Steak and Good-humor.--True Bread.--Device
+    for Stiff Shoulders.--Corsets and Girdles.--The Latter more
+    Needed.--How to be Pleased with One’s Self                        95
+
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  The Bonniest Kate in Christendom.--A Word to Mothers and
+    Aunts.--Different Vanities.--The Sorrows of Ugly
+    Women.--Recipes of an Ancient Beauty.--Sand Wash.--Color for
+    the Nails.--Embrocation for the Hands.--Soap to Bleach the
+    Arms.--Freckle Lotions.--Artistic Enthusiasm at the Toilet       108
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  A Dark Potion.--Olive-oil and Tar for the Face.--Olive-tar for
+    Inhalation.--Carbolic Lotion for Pimples.--Cure for Musquito
+    Bites.--Pale Blondes.--A French Marquise.--Deepening Colors by
+    Sunlight.--Seductive Cosmetics.--Nose-machine.--Finger Thimbles  117
+
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  Removal of Superfluous Hair.--Effects of High Living.--Work of
+    Typhoid Fever.--Roman Tweezers.--Lola Montez’s Recipes.--Paste
+    of Wood-ashes.--Bleaching Arms with Chloride.--Cautions about
+    Depilatories.--Public Baths.--Improving Complexions by the
+    Sulphur Vapor-bath.--How Arabian Women Perfume
+    Themselves.--Profuse Hair, Sign of Nature’s Bounty               125
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  Madame Celnart’s Works of the Toilet.--Literature of
+    Beauty.--Cares of the Toilet.--Arts of Coiffure and
+    Lacing.--How to Hold a Needle Gracefully.--Iris Powder for
+    Tresses.--Arts of Italian Women.--Depilatory used in
+    Harems.--Spirit of Pyrêtre.--Herbs used by Greek
+    Women.--Mexican Pomade.--Dusky Perfumed Marbles.--Lost
+    Perfumes.--Sultanas’ Lotion.--Brilliant Paste for Neck and
+    Arms.--Baking Enamel                                             134
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  The Last of the Rose.--Weighing in the Balances.--To Love and to
+    be Loved.--The Enigma of Love.--Its Power over the Lot of
+    Men.--Inspiration in the Looks.--The Land of Spring.--The
+    Duchess of Devonshire.--Women at and after Thirty.--Training of
+    Emotion.--Warming the Voice.--Crow’s-feet at the
+    Opera.--Bohemian Arsenic Waters.--Recipe from Madame
+    Vestris.--Milk of Roses.--Sweet-oils.--Opera-dancers’
+    Prescription for Restoring Suppleness                            146
+
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+
+  The Fearful Malady of which no one Dies.--_Esprit
+    Odontalgique._--Gray Pastilles.--Important to Smokers.--Mouth
+    Perfumes.--Care of the Breath.--Directions for
+    Bathing.--Perfumes for the Bath.--Bazin’s _Pâte_.--Quality of
+    Soaps.--Bathing and Anointing the Feet.--Nicety of
+    Stockings.--Delicate Shoe Linings.--Feet of Pauline Bonaparte    155
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  “The Leaves are Full of Joy.”--Nobility of the Body.--Its
+    Possibilities.--Brain and Heart Dependent on it.--Physical
+    Culture Imperative in America.--Our Contempt of Health.--Easier
+    to be Magnificent than Clean.--Distilled Water for Every
+    Use.--Substitute for Stills.--Vapor and Sulphur Baths.--Bran
+    Baths.--Oatmeal for the Hands.--Frequency of Baths.--Remedies
+    for Hepatic Spots                                                165
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  The Banting System.--A Quaint Author.--Trials of
+    Corpulency.--Result of Living on Sixpence a Day.--Indifference
+    of Doctors.--A Wise Surgeon.--Relation of Glucose to
+    Obesity.--Diet for Stout People.--No Starch, no Sugar.--Losing
+    Flesh at the Rate of a Pound a Week.--“Human
+    Beans.”--Humors of Banting’s Tract.--His Gratitude.--Honors to
+    Dr. Harvey.--One Day with Dives, the Next with
+    Lazarus.--Bromide of Ammonia                                     175
+
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  A Letter.--Trials of a Plain Woman.--The Best Husband in the
+    World.--Burdock Wash for the Hair.--For Children’s Hair.--Oil
+    of Mace as a Stimulant.--To Restore Color to the
+    Hair.--Sperm-oil a Powerful Hair Restorer.--The Cheapest
+    Hair-Dye.--Cure for Chilblains.--Loose Shoes the Cause of
+    Corns.--Pyroligneous Acid for Corns.--Turpentine and Carbolic
+    Acid for Soft Corns                                              185
+
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  A Talk about Complexions.--Delicate Lotion.--Cause of Rough
+    Faces.--Sun Painting and Bleaching.--Court Ladies Refusing to
+    Wash their Faces.--Experiments with Olive-tar.--Consumption
+    and Clear Faces.--Rev. W. H. H. Murray on Olive-tar.--Porcelain
+    Women.--Drawing Humors to the Surface.--What is to be Done for
+    the Weak Women?                                                  192
+
+
+  CHAPTER XX.
+
+  Sulphur Baths.--Bleaching Old Faces.--Experiments in
+    Bathing.--Cautions.--Need of Public Baths.--Their Proper
+    Prices.--Method of Giving Sulphur Vapor-baths.--Hot Baths for
+    Hot Weather.--Russian Baths at Home.--Improvements Needed in
+    Public Baths.--What they Should be.--What they Are.--The
+    Russian Vapor-bath.--After-Sensations.--Brightness and
+    Lightness of Health.--Reverence for the Physical.--Influence of
+    Bathing on the Nerves and Passions.--Necessity of Public Baths   198
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  Devices of Uneasy Age.--Bread Paste and Court-plaster to Conceal
+    Wrinkles.--Accepting the Situation.--Plain Women and Agreeable
+    Toilets.--Examples.--The Rector’s Daughter.--Dressing on Two
+    Hundred a Year.--Écru Linen and White Nansook.--A Senator’s
+    Wife.--A Washington Success.--Dull, Thin Faces.--Hay-colored
+    Hair.--Advantages of Lining Rooms with Mirrors                   212
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  Physical Education of Girls.--A Woman’s Value in the
+    World.--High-bred Figures.--Antique Races.--Inspiration
+    of Art not Vanity.--The Trying Age.--Dress, Food, and Bathing
+    for Young Girls.--A Veto on Close Study.--Braces and
+    Backboards.--Never Talk of Girls’ Feelings.--Exercise for the
+    Arms.--Singing Scales with Corsets off.--Development of the
+    Bust.--Open-work Corsets the Best.--The Bayaderes of India and
+    their Forms.--The Delicacy due Young Girls.--A Frank but Needed
+    Caution.--Care of the Figure after Nursing                       224
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  Hands and Complexions.--Preparing for Parties.--Refining
+    Rough Faces.--Carbolic Baths.--Chalk and
+    Cascarilla.--Glycerine Wash.--School-girls’ Flushed Hands and
+    Faces.--To Soften the Hands.--Red Noses.--Secrets of
+    Making-up.--Cologne for the Eyes.--Cosmetic Gloves.--To
+    Impart a Brilliant Complexion                                    238
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  Women’s Looks and Nerves.--A Low-toned Generation.--Children
+    and their Ways.--Brief Madness.--Women in the
+    Woods.--Singing.--Work well done the Easiest.--Sleep the Remedy
+    for Temper.--Hours for Sleep.--The Great Medicines--Sunshine,
+    Music, Work, and Sleep                                           247
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  Changing Wigs and Chignons.--Matching Braids.--Frizzing the
+    Hair.--Crimping-pins.--Blonde Hair-pins.--What Colors
+    Hair.--Bleaching Tresses.--Sulphur Paste.--Foxy
+    Locks.--Freshening Switches                                      257
+
+
+  CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  Hair and Complexion.--Black Dyes.--Persian Blue-Black.--Peroxide
+    of Hydrogen.--Chloride of Gold.--Transient Dyes                  267
+
+
+
+
+THE UGLY-GIRL PAPERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ Woman’s Business to be Beautiful.--How to Acquire a Clear
+   Complexion.--Regimen for Purity of the Blood.--Carbonate
+   of Ammonia and Powdered Charcoal.--Stippled Skins.--Face
+   Masks.--Oily Complexions.--Irritations of the Skin.--Lettuce as a
+   Cosmetic.--Cooling Drinks.--Sun-Baths.--Bread and Molasses.
+
+
+The first requisite in a woman toward pleasing others is that she
+should be pleased with herself. In no other way can she attain that
+self-poise, that satisfaction, which leaves her at liberty to devote
+herself successfully to others.
+
+I appeal to the ugly sisterhood to know if this is not so. Could a
+woman be made to believe herself beautiful, it would go far toward
+making her so. Those hopeless, shrinking souls, alive with devotion
+and imagination, with hearts as fit to make passionate and worshiped
+lovers, or steadfast and inspiring heroines, as the fairest Venus of
+the sex, need not for an instant believe there is no alleviation for
+their case, no chance of making face and figure more attractive and
+truer exponents of the spirit within.
+
+There is scarcely any thing in the history of women more touching
+than the homage paid to beauty by those who have it not. No slave
+among her throng of adorers appreciated more keenly the beauty of
+Récamier than the skeleton-like, irritable Madame De Chateaubriand.
+The loveliness of a rival eats into a girl’s heart like corrosion;
+every fair curling hair, every grace of outline, is traced in lines of
+fire on the mind of the plainer one, and reproduced with microscopic
+fidelity. It is a woman’s business to be beautiful. She recommends
+every virtue and heroism by the grace which sets them forth. Women of
+genius are the first to lay the crown of womanhood on the head of the
+most beautiful. Mere fashion of face and form are not meant by beauty,
+but that symmetry and brightness which come of physical and spiritual
+refinement. Such are the heroines of Scott, Disraeli, and Bulwer, as
+inspiring as they are rare. Toward such ideals all women yearn.
+
+Who will say that this most natural feeling of the feminine heart may
+not have some fulfillment in the first thirty years of life? This limit
+is given because the latest authorities in social science assert that
+woman’s prime of youth is twenty-six, moving the barriers a good ten
+years ahead from the old standard of the novelist, whose heroines are
+always in the dew of sixteen. In the very first place, one may boldly
+say that beauty, or rather fascination, is not a matter of youth, and
+no woman ought to sigh over her years till she feels the frost creeping
+into her heart. Men of the world understand well that a woman’s wit
+is finest, and her heart yields the richest wealth, when experience
+has formed the fair and colorless material of youth. A sweet girl of
+seventeen and a high-bred beauty of thirty, if well preserved, may
+dispute the palm. I do not mean to decry rose-buds and dew. One hardly
+knows which to love them for most--their loveliness or their briefness.
+But women who look their thirties in the face should not lay down the
+sceptre of life, or fancy that its delights for them are over. They are
+young while they seem young.
+
+Then we may boldly set about renovating the outward form, sure that
+Nature will respond to our efforts. The essence of beauty is health;
+but all apparently healthy people are not fair. The type of the system
+must be considered in treatment. The brunette is usually built up
+of much iron, and the bilious secretion is sluggish. The blonde is
+apt to be dyspeptic, and subject to disturbances of the blood. From
+these causes result freckles, pimples, and that coarse, indented skin
+_stippled_ with punctures, like the tissue of pig-skin--a fault of
+many otherwise clear complexions.
+
+The fairest skins belong to people in the earliest stage of
+consumption, or those of a scrofulous nature. This miraculous clearness
+and brilliance is due to the constant purgation which wastes the
+consumptive, or to the issue which relieves the system of impurities
+by one outlet. We must secure purity of the blood by less exhaustive
+methods. The diet should be regulated according to the habit of
+the person. If stout, she should eat as little as will satisfy her
+appetite; never allowing herself, however, to rise from the table
+hungry. A few days’ resolute denial will show how much really is
+needed to keep up the strength. When recovering from severe nervous
+prostration, years ago, the writer found her appetite gone. The least
+morsel satisfied hunger, and more produced a repugnance she never tried
+to overcome. She resumed study six hours a day and walked two miles
+every day from the suburbs to the centre of the city, and back again.
+Breakfast usually was a small saucer of strawberries and one Graham
+cracker, and was not infrequently dispensed with altogether. Lunch was
+half an orange--for the burden of eating the other half was not to be
+thought of; and at six o’clock a handful of cherries formed a plentiful
+dinner. Once a week she did crave something like beef-steak or soup,
+and took it. But, guiding herself wholly by appetite, she found with
+surprise that her strength remained steady, her nerves grew calm, and
+her ability to study was never better. This is no rule for any one,
+farther than to say persons of well-developed physique need not fear
+any limitation of diet for a time which does not tell on the strength
+and is approved by appetite. Never eat too much; never go hungry.
+
+For weak digestion nothing is so relished or strengthens so much as the
+rich beef tea, or rather gravy, prepared from the beef-jelly sold by
+first-rate grocers. This is very different from the extracts of beef
+made by chemists. The condensed beef prepared by the same companies
+which send out the condensed milk is preferable, in all respects, as
+to taste and nourishment. A table-spoonful of this jelly, dissolved by
+pouring a cup of boiling water on it, and drank when cool, will give as
+much strength as three fourths of a pound of beef-steak broiled. For
+singers and students, who need a light but strengthening diet, nothing
+is so admirable.
+
+Nervous people, and sanguine ones, should adopt a diet of eggs, fish,
+soups, and salads, with fruit. This cools the blood, and leaves the
+strength to supply the nerves instead of taxing them to digest heavy
+preparations. Lymphatic people should especially prefer such lively
+salads as cress, pepper-grass, horseradish, and mustard. These are
+nature’s correctives, and should appear on the table from March to
+November, to be eaten not merely as relishes, but as stimulating and
+beneficial food. They stir the blood, and clear the eye and brain
+from the humors of spring. Nervous people should be more sparing of
+these fiery delights, and eat abundantly of golden lettuce, which
+contains opium in its most delicate and least injurious state. The
+question of fat meat does not seem satisfactorily settled. I should
+compound by using rich soups which contain the essence of meats, and
+supply carbon by salad-oil and a free use of nuts or cream. Plump, fair
+people may let oily matters of all kinds carefully alone. Thin ones
+should eat vegetables--if they can find a cook who knows how to make
+them palatable. It is strange that in this country, which produces the
+finest vegetables, fit for the envy of foreign cooks, not one out of
+a hundred knows how to prepare them properly. People who are anxious
+to be rid of flesh should choose acids, lemons, limes, and tamarinds,
+eat sparingly of dry meats, with crackers instead of bread, and follow
+strictly the advice now given.
+
+To clear the complexion or reduce the size, the blood must be
+carefully cleansed. Two simple chemicals should appear on every
+toilet-table--the carbonate of ammonia and powdered charcoal. No
+cosmetic has more frequent uses than these. The ammonia must be kept in
+glass, with a glass stopper, from the air. French charcoal is preferred
+by physicians, as it is more finely ground, and a large bottle of it
+should be kept on hand. In cases of debility and all wasting disorders
+it is valuable. To clear the complexion, take a teaspoonful of charcoal
+well mixed in water or honey for three nights, then use a simple
+purgative to remove it from the system. It acts like calomel, with
+no bad effects, purifying the blood more effectually than any thing
+else. But some simple aperient must not be omitted, or the charcoal
+will remain in the system, a mass of festering poison, with all the
+impurities it absorbs. After this course of purification, tonics may be
+used. Many people seem not to know that protoxide of iron, medicated
+wine, and “bracing” medicines are useless when the impurities remain
+in the blood. The use of charcoal is daily better understood by our
+best physicians, and it is powerful, and simple enough to be handled
+by every household. The purifying process, unless the health is
+unusually good, must be repeated every three months. We absorb in bad
+food and air more unprofitable matter than nature can throw off in
+that time. If diet and atmosphere were perfect, no such aid would be
+needed; but it is the choice between a very great and a small evil in
+existing conditions. A free use of tomatoes and figs is, by the way,
+recommended, to maintain a healthy condition of the stomach, and the
+seeds of either should _not_ be discarded.
+
+The most troublesome task is to refine a _stippled_ skin whose
+oil-glands are large and coarse. There may not be a pimple or freckle
+on the face, and the temples may be smooth, but the nose and cheeks
+look like a pin-cushion from which the pins have just been drawn.
+Patience and many applications are necessary, for one must, in fact,
+renew the skin.
+
+The worst face may be softened by wearing a mask of quilted cotton
+wet in cold water at night. Roman ladies used poultices of bread and
+asses’ milk for the same purpose; but water, and especially distilled
+water, is all that is needful. A small dose of taraxacum every other
+night will assist in refining the skin. But it will be at least a six
+weeks’ work to effect the desired change; and it will be a zealous girl
+who submits to the discomfort of the mask for that length of time. The
+result pays. The compress acts like a mild but imperceptible blister,
+and leaves a new skin, soft as an infant’s. Bathing oily skins with
+camphor dries the oil somewhat, when the camphor would parch nice
+complexions. The opium found in the stalks of flowering lettuce refines
+the skin singularly, and may be used clear, instead of the soap which
+sells so high. Rub the milky juice collected from broken stems of
+coarse garden lettuce over the face at night, and wash with a solution
+of ammonia in the morning.
+
+Blondes who are unbeautiful are apt to have divers irritations of the
+skin, which their darker neighbors do not know. People of this type
+also have a tendency to acid stomachs, the antidote for which is a
+dose of ammonia, say one quarter of a spoonful in half a glass of
+water, taken every night and morning. This also prevents decay of the
+teeth and sweetens the breath, and is less injurious than the soda
+and magnesia many ladies use for acid stomachs. In summer the system
+should be kept cool by bathing at night and morning, and by tart drinks
+containing cream of tartar. Small quantities of nitre, prescribed
+by the physician, may be taken by very sanguine persons who suffer
+with heat; but pale complexions should seek the sun when its power is
+not too great, and be careful, of all things, to avoid a chill. This
+deadens the skin, paints blue circles round the eyes, and leaves the
+hands an uncertain color.
+
+These precautions may seem burdensome, but they all have been practiced
+by those who prize beauty. Nothing is so attractive, so suggestive
+of purity of mind and excellence of body, as a clear, fine-grained
+skin. Strong color is not desirable. Tints, rather than colors, best
+please the refined eye in the complexion. Some mothers are so anxious
+to secure this grace for their daughters that they are kept on the
+strictest diet from childhood. The most dazzling Parian could not be
+more beautiful than the cheek of a child I once saw who was kept on
+oatmeal porridge for this effect. At a boarding-school, I remember, a
+fashionable mother gave strict injunctions that her daughter should
+touch nothing but brown bread and syrup. This was hard fare; but the
+carmine lips and magnolia brow of the young lady were the envy of her
+schoolmates, who, however, were not courageous enough to attempt such a
+régime for themselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ Care of the Hair.--Children’s Hair.--When to Cut it.--Ammonia
+   Washes.--Glycerine and Ammonia.--Pomades.--How to Brush the
+   Hair.--Cutting the Ends.--German Method of Treating the
+   Hair.--Southernwood Pomade.--Hair-Dyes.--Dyeing the Eyebrows and
+   Eyelashes.--Superfluous Hair.--Depilatories.--Washes for the
+   Eyelashes and Eyebrows.
+
+
+St. Paul approved himself no less a connoisseur of female beauty than
+a censor of decorum when he wrote, “If a woman have long hair, it
+is a glory to her.” This is in no wise inconsistent with the other
+apostolic passage which discourages ornate hair-dressing, for abundant
+shining hair needs less care to arrange than a scanty crop that must be
+disposed to the best advantage. The woman whose magnificent chevelure
+reaches to her waist, thick as one’s wrist when tightly bound, needs
+no braid nor cataract, finger-puff nor snow-curl, nor band of gold or
+amber to crown herself. Every girl ought to have such hair. Mothers
+should remember that such gifts of nature form a dowry which has no
+little weight in the incidents of a woman’s life, and should cultivate
+assiduously the locks of their daughters. It is not best to keep them
+closely cut: after five years they should never be touched by scissors,
+save to clip the ends once a month, as hereafter explained, but should
+be smoothly braided in long Marguerite plaits, the most convenient
+style, unless the mother is ambitious of seeing her pet’s hair in
+curls. Hardly any locks will resist good discipline, if taken in the
+downy stage of infancy and submitted to papillotes. It is a mistaken
+notion that a luxuriant growth of hair in childhood weakens the head.
+Nature is not in the habit of providing superfluities. The Breton
+women are noted for their magnificent hair, which is allowed to grow
+from childhood. The barbarity of the fine comb should be abolished in
+civilized nurseries, and a daily or semi-weekly wash with ammonia or
+soap substituted, with a thorough brushing afterward. A child’s head is
+too tender for any rasping process; even knotted snarls should be cut
+rather than pulled out. Send tow-headed children into the sun as much
+as possible, that its rays may affect every particle of the iron in the
+blood, and change the flaxen colors to more agreeable shades.
+
+When the hair has been neglected, cut it to an even length, and wash
+the scalp nightly with soft water into which ammonia has been poured.
+This may be as strong as possible at first, so that it does not burn
+the skin. Afterward the proportions may be three large spoonfuls of
+ammonia to a basin of water. Apply with a brush, stirring the hair well
+while the head is partially immersed. Do this at night, so that it may
+have a chance to dry, for nothing is so disagreeable as hair put up wet
+and turned musty. Wring and wipe it thoroughly, then comb and shake out
+the tresses in a draft of air till nearly dry, when it may be done
+up in a cotton net. Night-caps heat the head and injure hair. Ammonia
+is the most healthful and efficient stimulus known for the hair, and
+quickens its growth when nothing else will do so. A healthy system will
+supply oil enough for the hair if the head is kept clean. If the scalp
+is unnaturally dry, a mixture of half an ounce of carbonate of ammonia
+in a pint of sweet-oil makes the most esteemed hair invigorator.
+Glycerine and ammonia make a delicate dressing for the hair, and will
+not soil the nicest bonnet. Pomades of all kinds are voted vulgar, and
+justly. The only excuse for their use is just before entering a sea
+bath, when a thorough oiling of the hair prevents injury from salt
+water. It should be speedily washed off with a dilution of ammonia.
+
+When a growth of young hair is established, it ought to lengthen at
+least eight inches a year in a vigorous subject. Hair is an index of
+vitality. The women of the tropics, with their abounding health, have
+luxuriant chevelures. Among Spanish and South American women hair a
+yard long, in a coil as thick as the wrist, is the rule, and not the
+exception. The warmth of those latitudes favors the secretions, and
+stimulates every organ to its fullest development. To obtain like
+results, we must try to obtain the same conditions of luxuriant health.
+A good circulation is essential to fineness and pleasing color of the
+hair. The scalp must be stimulated by frequent brushing, as well as by
+the ammonia bath. A lady of fashion decreed one hundred strokes of the
+brush to be given her celebrated locks daily, and those who have tried
+the experiment find that it is not at all too much. Given quickly,
+this number occupies three minutes in bestowing, and surely this is
+little enough time to give a fine head of hair. Once a month the ends
+of the hair should be cut, to remove the forked ends, which stop its
+growth. The patrons of a certain New York school of high repute will
+remember the young daughter of an Albany gentleman, whose wonderful
+hair was the pride of the establishment. The child was about ten years
+old, and her heavy tresses reached literally to the floor. She was not
+unfrequently shown to visitors as a phenomenon, veiled in this flood of
+hair. On inquiry, it was found that no peculiar treatment was given it
+beyond cutting the ends regularly every month for years.
+
+An old authority gives the following as the German method of treating
+the hair. The women of that country are known to have remarkably
+luxuriant locks: Once in two weeks wash the head with a quart of soft
+water in which a handful of bran has been boiled and a little white
+soap dissolved. Next rub the yolk of an egg slightly beaten into
+the roots of the hair; let it remain a few minutes, and wash it off
+thoroughly with pure water, rinsing the head well. Wipe and rub the
+hair dry with a towel, and comb it up from the head, parting it with
+the fingers. In winter do all this near the fire. Have ready some soft
+pomatum of beef marrow, boiled with a little almond or olive-oil,
+flavored with mild perfume. Rub a small quantity of this on the skin of
+the head after it has been washed as above. This may be efficient, but
+in this age women prefer the cleanlier method of stimulating the hair
+without pomade.
+
+If any ladies are as fond of stirring up cosmetics and washes as were
+the wife and daughters of the Vicar of Wakefield, they may try these
+highly recommended recipes:
+
+The following is said to be an excellent curling fluid: Put two pounds
+of common soap cut small into three pints of spirits of wine, and
+melt together, stirring with a clean piece of wood; add essence of
+ambergris, citron, and neroli, about a quarter of an ounce of each.
+
+Rowland’s Macassar Oil for the hair: Take a quarter of an ounce of the
+clippings of alkanet root, tie this in a bit of coarse muslin, and
+suspend it in a jar containing eight ounces of sweet-oil for a week,
+covering from the dust. Add to this sixty drops of the tincture of
+cantharides, ten drops of oil of rose, neroli and lemon each sixty
+drops. Let these stand three weeks closely corked, and you will have
+one of the most powerful stimulants for the growth of the hair ever
+known.
+
+Take a pound and a half of southernwood and boil it, slightly bruised,
+in a quart of old olive-oil, with half a pint of port-wine or spirit.
+When thoroughly boiled, strain the oil carefully through a linen cloth.
+Repeat the operation three times with fresh southernwood, and add two
+ounces of bear’s grease or fresh lard. Apply twice a week to the hair,
+and brush it in well.
+
+Where a hair-dye is deemed essential, the deplorable want may be met by
+this recipe, which has the merit of being less harmful than most of the
+nostrums in use: Boil equal parts of vinegar, lemon juice, and powdered
+litharge for half an hour, over a slow fire, in a porcelain-lined
+vessel. Wet the hair with this decoction, and in a short time it will
+turn black.
+
+Lola Montez gives a hair-dye which is said to be instantaneous, and
+as harmless as any mineral dye used. It is made from gallic acid, ten
+grains; acetic acid, one ounce; tincture of sesquichloride of iron,
+one ounce. Dissolve the gallic acid in the sesquichloride, and add the
+acetic acid. Wash the hair with soap and water, and apply the dye by
+dipping a fine comb in it and drawing through the hair so as to color
+the roots thoroughly. Let it dry; oil and brush.
+
+White lashes and eyebrows are so disagreeably suggestive that one can
+not blame their possessor for disguising them by a harmless device.
+A decoction of walnut-juice should be made in the season, and kept
+in a bottle for use the year round. It is to be applied with a small
+hair-pencil to the brows and lashes, turning them to a rich brown,
+which harmonizes with fair hair. It may be applied to the edge of the
+hair about the face and neck, when that is paler than the rest. Let
+me repeat that the best remedy for ill-used tresses is strict care;
+glossy, vitalized tresses, kept in order by constant brushing, assume
+by degrees a better color. It is a mistake to soak red hair with oil
+in the hope of making it darker; it should be kept wavy and light
+as possible, to show off the rich lights and shadows with which it
+abounds. The sun has a good effect on obnoxious shades of hair if it is
+otherwise well attended to, and red or white locks should be worn in
+floating masses, waved by fine plaiting at night, or by crimping-pins,
+which _do not_ injure hair unless worn too tight. Pale hair shows a
+want of iron in the system, and this is to be supplied by a free use
+of beef-steaks, soups, pure beef gravies, and red wines. Salt-water
+bathing strengthens the system, and acts favorably on the hair. As to
+color, hardly any shade is unlovely when luxuriant and in a lively
+condition. It is only when diseased or uncared for that any color
+appears disagreeable. Sandy hair, when well brushed and kept glossy
+with the natural oil of the scalp, changes to a warm golden tinge. I
+have seen a most obnoxious head of this color so changed by a few
+years’ care that it became the admiration of the owner’s friends, and
+could hardly be recognized as the withered, fiery locks once worn.
+
+Superfluous hair is as troublesome to those who have it as baldness
+is to others. There is no way to remove it but by dilute acids or
+caustics, patiently applied time after time, as the hair makes
+its appearance. The mildest depilatories known are parsley water,
+acacia-juice, and the gum of ivy. It is said that nut-oil will prevent
+the hair from growing. The juice of the milk-thistle, mixed with oil,
+according to medical authority, prevents the hair from growing too low
+on the forehead, or straggling on the nape of the neck. As Willis says,
+Nature often slights this part of her masterpiece. Muriatic acid, very
+slightly reduced, applied with a sable pencil, will destroy the hair;
+and, to prevent its growing, the part may be often bathed with strong
+camphor or clear ammonia. The latter will serve as a depilatory, but
+causes great pain, and must be quickly washed off. The depilatories
+sold in the shops are strong caustics, and leave the skin very hard
+and unpleasant. Bathe the upper lip, or other feature afflicted with
+superfluous hair, with ammonia or camphor, as strong as can be borne,
+and the hair will die out in a few weeks. Moles, with long hairs in
+them, should be touched with lunar caustic repeatedly. A large, dark
+mole on a lady’s neck was reduced to an unnoticeable white spot, but
+the nitrate of silver caused a sore for a week in place of the mole.
+Care should be taken to brush the back hair upward from childhood, to
+prevent the disfiguring growth of weak, loose hairs on the neck. Fine
+clean wood-ashes, mixed with a little water to form a paste, makes a
+tolerable depilatory for weak hair, without any pain. Strong pearlash
+washes also kill out poor hair.
+
+A clever scientific man suggested that the growth of hair might be
+hastened by frequently applying electric currents to it, or bathing
+it in electrical water. Similar experiments have been made on vital
+tissues with remarkable success. But this theory must be left for
+further development.
+
+The eyelashes may be improved by delicately cutting off their forked
+and gossamer points, and anointing with a salve of two drachms of
+ointment of nitric oxide of mercury and one drachm of lard. Mix the
+lard and ointment well, and anoint the edges of the eyelids night and
+morning, washing after each time with warm milk and water. This, it
+is said, will restore the lashes when lost by disease. The effect of
+black lashes is to deepen the color of gray eyes. They may be darkened
+for theatricals by taking the black of frankincense, resin, and mastic
+burned together. This will not come off with perspiration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ Elegance of Manner.--Grace of the Latin Races.--The Secret
+   of Grace.--Gliding Movement.--Calisthenics.--Erectness of
+   Figure.--Shoulder Braces.--How to acquire Sloping
+   Shoulders.--Care of the Feet.--The Art of Walking.--Picturesque
+   Carriage of Southern Women.
+
+
+Was it not Madame de Genlis who described the education in manners
+under the old régime of France? In her memoirs she speaks of hating
+Paris, when she came from the provinces, for the ordeal she underwent
+there to fit her for polite society. She was taught, what she fancied
+she knew already, how to walk, and was placed in the stocks two or
+three hours a day to teach her the right position of her feet in
+standing. A corset and back-board were provided to form an erect habit.
+Whether in her day or later ones, the elegancies of manner are not
+cultivated without sincere pains. Nature, indeed, creates some models
+of such refined proportions and such informing spirit that they fall
+at once into the curves of grace; but these are meant for models, and
+happily nothing forbids those of lesser merit to attempt the same
+lesson. Are not some born masters of the piano, full-flown at once over
+the first difficulties of music? But does this hinder any pupil from
+six hours’ daily drill, if need be, to grasp the same difficulties?
+The one end is to be attained, whether instantly or not; and in some
+cases the most laborious is by all means the most delightful player.
+Courage, then. The same thing is true of other efforts than those of
+the key-board; and it is quite as certain that the woman who trains
+herself to be graceful will be so, as that the clumsy young pedant at
+the scales will, in time, rush victoriously through the “Shower of
+Pearls,” the “Cascade of Roses,” or any other drawing-room favorite of
+gelatinized octaves.
+
+For the first comfort, it must be owned that American women have the
+least natural grace of any nation in the world. English women are
+usually well trained in a sort of martinet propriety of attitude which
+suits their solid contours; but neither Anglo-Saxon race knows an
+approach to those lengthened curves, those bends of every slender joint
+and supple muscle, which fill the eye in looking at a woman of Latin
+race. I watched a Spanish-American girl in the gallery of the United
+States Senate one night, in order to seize, if possible, her charm of
+gesture. She was rounded, yet fine in figure, and seemed to be, as I
+can best phrase it, all muscle. No one could think of her bones as
+having any more stiffness than the pliant sprays of an elm. She leaned
+on the railing of the balcony, not straight forward as even the elegant
+and delicate diplomatic English ladies did, but lengthwise, as if
+reclining; and the bend of her supple wrist, with the black and gold
+fan, was simply inimitable to an American woman. Those intransferable
+curves bewitched the eye even to pain; but something was gained in that
+five minutes’ study which I reduce to two points: Sideway movements
+and attitudes please more than those either forward or backward. The
+secret of grace is to teach every joint of the body to bend all that it
+can.
+
+Take the last point first, and you have all that you need to teach the
+finest grace. To the dumb-bells, to the calisthenic exercises and work
+as if you were qualifying yourself to be a contortionist at a circus.
+Vitalize every fibre, as the hot-blooded Southerner is vitalized, and
+the body will play into grace of itself.
+
+The first thing is the hardest--to stand straight. Most people are
+satisfied indeed to attain this point of physical and polite culture,
+and never get beyond it. Erect stiffness is better than crookedness.
+To be admirable, the figure must be perfectly flat in the shoulders.
+No projecting shoulder-blades, no curves are allowed here, however
+pleasing they may be elsewhere. A stout figure can hardly be unrefined
+if it is flat behind. A pair of inelastic shoulder-braces must be
+called into requisition; and these should be made of coutille,
+or satin jean, two inches wide, and corded at the edge. Make them
+barely long enough to reach the belt of the skirts worn, and button
+on them. Set the shoulders perfectly flat against the wall, and find
+the distance between their blades; fasten a broad strap the same
+length--not more than two inches, very likely--by sewing it to the
+straps behind even with the lower edge of the scapula. This is the
+best, as well as the cheapest shoulder-brace to be found. If well
+proportioned, and all the measure taken scant, it can not fail to draw
+the shoulders into place. Excellent teachers of physical training
+say that the will alone should be used to force one’s self to stand
+straight. This is true of a person in perfect health. But round
+shoulders often result from weakness or sedentary pursuits, against
+whose influence it is useless to struggle; and I would not debar any
+half-invalid from the luxury of the support given by a strict pair of
+braces. They relieve the heart and lungs by throwing the weight of
+the chest on the back, where it belongs, instead of crowding it down
+on the breast. To correct the ugly rise of the shoulders which always
+accompanies curvature, and sometimes exists without it, weights must be
+used. Nothing is more unfeminine than the straight line of shoulder,
+which properly belongs to a cuirassier or an athlete. Some mothers make
+their young folks walk the floor with a pail of water in each hand,
+to give their shoulders a graceful droop. A substitute may be worn in
+one’s room while at work, in the shape of an outside brace of triple
+gray linen, having two extra straps buckling round the tip of each
+shoulder, one long end reaching the belt, with a wedge-shaped lead or
+iron weight hooked on it. This is heroic practice, but effectual; and
+its pains are amply compensated by lines of figure which are the surest
+exponents of high breeding.
+
+The position of the feet is not to be neglected in the lesson of
+standing. The toes should be widely turned out, to balance well; and
+if the foot is inclined to turn in, this may be remedied by having the
+boot heels made higher on the inside. This will throw the foot into
+a position to develop the arched instep. A crooked leg is a matter
+for surgical treatment; and in these days of curative ingenuity, with
+steel braces it will be but the work of a few months to bring the most
+awkward limb into shape. Those who have seen the wonders wrought with
+deformed children who have crooked limbs and bodies will consider it
+a simple matter to bring a partial disfiguration under control. As to
+the size of the feet, sensible people will never be persuaded that any
+degree of pressure which can be borne without suffering is injurious.
+Nature knows how to protect herself. A clever old shoe-dealer gave
+as his experience that people who always wear tight shoes never have
+corns. It is the alternation of tight and loose shoes that gives rise
+to these torments.
+
+The great-toe joint ought not to project beyond the line of the foot.
+I know a zealous young girl who regularly screwed her bare foot up in
+a linen bandage before going to bed, to keep it in shape. For painful
+swelling of the feet in warm weather, no remedy is as effectual as an
+ice-cold foot-bath for five minutes in the evening or when they are
+most troublesome. This, however, must never be taken without first
+wetting the head plentifully with ice-water, and keeping a cold bandage
+on it all the while. It is good to soak the feet for fifteen minutes
+in warm water at least twice a week. This keeps them elastic, and in
+delicate, pliant condition.
+
+An elegant carriage is the patent of nature’s nobility, and appears of
+itself when the body is held into proper attitudes, and made properly
+elastic by exercise. The great cause of all stiffness is want of
+exertion--a general rustiness of all the limbs. To the slender child of
+the South the climate supplies a degree of relaxation and suppleness
+which dispenses with the need of action. The women of South American
+colonies seldom walk for exercise, yet their movements are full of
+grace. The stimulus of thorough circulation, so potent and softening,
+can only be gained in our colder latitude by exertion. A lazy woman may
+be picturesque in a room or in a carriage, but never on foot. Americans
+have one-sided ideas of grace in walking. A woman as straight as a
+dart, who moves without any perceptible movement of the hips or limbs,
+is considered an excellent walker. But this unvarying rectitude is far
+from the poetry of motion. Watch the slight _balancement_ of a graceful
+French woman, and you will see an ease, a spontaneity, and variety of
+motion which set the former by comparison in the light of a bodkin out
+for a “constitutional.” A fine walk is an affair of proper balance.
+
+A clever friend, who has spent more time in the study of women’s ways
+and manners in different countries than one can think profitable, has
+some unique views on the subject of their walking. He says the haughty
+women of Old Spain carry their weight mainly on the hips, which
+gives an indescribable stiffness of demeanor. Americans do the same,
+throwing the weight a little more on the thigh, without bending the
+knee. French women carry the weight on the calf of the leg, and the
+knee bends very much at each step, while the body is carried with the
+least _balancement_ of the shoulders, and the head, so far from being
+held like a cockade, or the head of tongs, is easy. _La tête dégagée,
+les épaules tombante_ is the rule for a good style. Try the difference
+of contracting the muscles in the calf of the leg in walking, with the
+knee bent sensibly at each step. The body involuntarily throws itself
+back, and a lightness of motion is the result, which is impossible with
+the usual swing of the leg from the hips in the stiff walk of Saxon
+women. The same authority says that the far-famed serpentine glide of
+the creole, which travelers admire and vainly try to describe, comes
+from a peculiar movement of the hips. The weight of the figure is
+thrown on the loins, and half of the body moves alternately at each
+step, not in a wriggle, as it is caricatured at the North, but with
+a soft turn of the shoulders corresponding, and a smoothness which
+betrays the sensuous temperament and luxurious physique. Such is the
+walk of the women of Venezuela, Bogota, and La Plata. Such a gait,
+however, would hardly be accepted in the Champs Elysées as suggestive
+of high refinement. The women of Alabama and Georgia have traits enough
+of this walk to make them among the most graceful in the world, as far
+as carriage goes. The creoles of the Gulf have this sinuous glide,
+betraying a flexibility of limb which we can scarcely imagine. To gain
+this pliancy, twisting movements of gymnastics are especially suitable.
+Gyrations of each limb, the head and body, produce, in a few weeks’
+practice, an enviable degree of elasticity, which gives the carriage
+something more than the up and down, forward and back, straight lines
+of motion with which ladies ordinarily favor us. A smooth, long step,
+the weight of the body on the loins, where nature intended it should
+be, and the legs propelled from thence, without stiffness at the knee
+or obtrusive motion of the hips, is, probably, the ideal of walking;
+such as one finds both in a highly trained woman and in the untaught
+perfection of a South Sea Islander.
+
+I have spoken at length on the topic of walking, because its importance
+as an art of grace can not be overrated, and because it has a still
+deeper bearing on women’s health. The training which secures an
+elegant carriage is precisely that which counteracts the tendency
+to a dozen fatal relaxations at different points of the frame, and
+prevents their appearance. No one ought to say that walking brings
+on the disorders which blanch and wither feminine life. The cause is
+the fatal, inherited weakness of constitution, shown by either undue
+redness or pallor, by indolence or excitability, which is a slow decay
+from its first breath, and poisons the hopes and the loveliness of so
+many women. These doomed beings must work out their own salvation,
+and make themselves anew in the effort. The weaknesses would develop
+whether they walked or not. The care should be to adjust exercise and
+nourishment, stimulus and rest, in due proportion. But the weak woman
+must have separate counsel, for she by no means comes under the head of
+these unpremeditated consultations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ N. P. Willis as a Critic of Beauty.--The Perfume of the
+   Presence.--Charm of Good Circulation.--Chills are Incipient
+   Congestion.--Paper Clothing.--Luxuries of the Bath.--A Substitute
+   for Sea-Baths.--To Secure Fragrant Breath.--Delicate
+   Dentifrices.--Fine Cologne.--A List of Fragrance.
+
+
+When Willis died, American society lost its great personal critic. No
+other writer shows such insight into the subtile elements of women’s
+beauty, or speaks so assuredly on points of mere outward attraction.
+That gentle and gracious critic who blesses the order of Old Bachelors
+dissects feminine manner with zest, but is not given to that mention
+of ear-locks and finger-tips which made “People I have Met” such
+a conserve of hints for the dressing-table. It is a pity such a
+connoisseur of feminine graces could not have taken half a hundred
+distinguished specimens into his training to show the world such women
+as fill the ideal of a refined man of the world. Willis was susceptible
+to beauty wherever he found it: a perfect ear on the head of a plain
+country girl would not miss the glance of this artist, and he betrays
+what single charms may rivet the regard of a man of taste a dozen times
+in those glorious sketches we never hope to see excelled.
+
+You remember one of his heroines was remarkable for the perfume
+which exhaled from her person. We are not to suppose that this most
+fascinating gift was due to Coudray’s sachets, or to hedyosima on her
+hair. From repeated experience, verified by that of very discerning and
+sensitive persons, it is affirmed that certain people of fine organism
+and perfect health have a fragrance belonging to their presence like
+scent to a flower. One of the most powerful feminine novelists of
+the day said that she always knew when a favorite brother had been
+in a room by the slight indefinable perfume that followed him. His
+pillow breathed it, and his easy-chair, and it was perceived even by
+comparative strangers. I have known persons innocent of using perfume,
+whose fragrant presence was recognized by every one who came near them.
+In all cases this was accompanied by a bodily condition of perfect
+health and much magnetic attraction. This may be named the first in
+that list of subtile personal properties which constitute the strongest
+and most enduring of physical charms, and which are not discussed with
+any proportion to their potency. We do not stop to ask what pleases us;
+refinement attracts, sweetness detains us, and we are only too glad to
+lie under the spell.
+
+May a plain woman reach her hand for these gifts of pleasing? Surely.
+They were meant to be nature’s compensation for the lack of chiseled
+features and ruffled tresses. To reach this subtile refinement requires
+such preparation as the virgins underwent for the court of Ahasuerus:
+“Six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors”--if not
+in kind, yet in care.
+
+The secret of lively spirits, even temper, and magnetic presence
+can never be attained in the world without a perfect circulation of
+the blood. It may be out of season to say that people often keep
+themselves too cold; but lay the hint away till next October, when
+the weather changes, and mark the facts. Our seasons are two thirds
+cold or chilly; our habits are sedentary, which tends to reduce the
+force of the system; as a people we are not of excitable temperament;
+and yet stout men and hearty doctors, who go rushing through their
+business all day, complain because women sit in overheated rooms, and
+can not endure draughts in the halls. There is but one answer to this:
+Nature is her own guide, and it is one of her laws that no creature
+can be uncomfortable in any way without losing by it. If the tone of
+the system is so low that a woman feels chilly in a room at seventy
+degrees, put the heat at once up to eighty, or higher, till she feels
+luxuriously warm. Chilliness is a symptom to be most dreaded. When the
+blood forsakes the skin, it clogs the heart, the internal organs, and
+lays the train for those diseases of the time--neuralgia, paralysis,
+rheumatism, and congestion. In fact, every person who suffers from
+one of these stupid chills is in a state of incipient congestion. How
+hateful is the miserable economy which stints fires in the raw days of
+May and September, because the calendar of household routine decrees
+that it is not the season for stoves and grates! Not less irritating
+is it to sit with a circle half shivering in a large parlor, because
+the full-blooded, active master of the house has decided that it is
+nonsense to turn the heat on. The slow tortures such unfeeling people
+inflict on their innocent victims will be witnesses against them some
+day, to their great surprise.
+
+Even in summer many delicate persons find the skin always cold. Those
+who are so susceptible should never be without protection. The most
+convenient is a sheet of tissue paper quilted in marcelline silk, and
+worn between the shoulders, the most sensitive point of the whole
+body for feeling cold. The comfort of this slight device can hardly
+be imagined. Paper is a non-conductor of heat, but porous enough to
+admit air, so that it never leaves the dampness of rubber or oil-silk
+protectors. Even in winter the warmth of these slender linings exceeds
+that of a sheet of wadding. In the change of the year, when it is not
+cold enough for flannel, and one can not be comfortable without some
+extra clothing, this is just what is wanted. A sheet of quilted paper
+should be worn for the back, and one for the chest, the arms cased in
+the legs cut from old silk or thread stockings, which cling to the
+flesh, and keep it from the air better than any other article. Thus
+equipped, a delicate woman may face the subtle chills of spring and
+autumn without a shiver. Added warmth is not necessary about the trunk
+of the body till extreme cold weather. Clothes fit closely there,
+and the vital centres always generate most heat, so that only the
+extremities and the upper part of the chest need protection.
+
+The daily bath needs to be administered with some care. The value of
+hot bathing is hardly understood. In congested circulation nothing
+is so effective as a ten minutes’ bath at eighty-five degrees, the
+water covering the body entirely, followed by a cold sponge-bath,
+quickly given, and immediate drying. Bath-towels are not half large
+enough as commonly made. They should be small sheets in size, like the
+real Turkish bath-towels used by the women of Constantinople, which
+envelop the body, and dry it at once. A bath should never chill one,
+and the feelings may be safely trusted as guides in the matter. To a
+constitution strong enough to meet it, even though somewhat depressed
+at the time, nothing is so inviting as the stimulus of the cold bath,
+the instant’s chill followed by the rush of warm blood all over the
+body. For weak systems an invigorant is found, so simple and effective
+that the wonder is why it was not used long ago. When the season or
+circumstances forbid a stay on the sea-coast, a substitute nearly if
+not quite as strengthening is found in an ammonia bath. A gill of
+liquid ammonia in a pail of water makes an invigorating solution, whose
+delightful effects can only be compared to a plunge in the surf. Weak
+persons will find this a luxury and a tonic beyond compare. It cleanses
+the skin, and stimulates it wonderfully. After such a bath the flesh
+feels firm and cool like marble. More than this, the ammonia purifies
+the body from all odor of perspiration. Those in whom the secretion is
+unpleasant will find relief by using a spoonful of the tincture in a
+basin of water, and washing the armpits well with it every morning. The
+feet may be rid of odor in the same way.
+
+But what shall destroy that foe to sentiment, that bane of all beauty,
+an offensive breath? I can not imagine a woman could fall in love with
+Hyperion if he had this drawback. The suggestion of unrefinement and
+of physical disorder it gives would weigh against all the moral and
+intellectual worth which might lie behind it. The antidote, happily,
+is as simple as the evil is prevailing. With attention to the health,
+and brushing the teeth at least night and morning, all besides that
+is needed to secure a sweet breath is to dissolve a bit of licorice
+the size of a cent in the mouth after using the tooth-brush. This
+will even counteract the effects of indigestion, and does not convey
+the unpleasant suggestion of cachous and spice, that they are used to
+hide an offense. Licorice has no smell, but it sweetens the mouth and
+stomach. A stick of it should be chipped for use, and kept in a box on
+the toilette.
+
+A tincture which restores soundness to the gums is one ounce of
+coarsely powdered Peruvian bark steeped in half a pint of brandy for
+a fortnight. Gargle the mouth night and morning with a teaspoonful of
+this tincture, diluted with an equal quantity of rose-water.
+
+For decaying teeth make a balsam of two scruples of myrrh in fine
+powder, a scruple of juniper gum, and ten grains of rock alum, mixed
+in honey, and apply often.
+
+It is useful also to chew a bit of orris-root, which Browning says
+Florentine ladies love to use in mass-time; or to wash the mouth with
+the tincture of myrrh, or take a bit of myrrh the size of a hazel-nut
+at night, or a piece of burned alum.
+
+A very agreeable dentifrice is made from an ounce of myrrh in fine
+powder and a little powdered green sage, mixed with two spoonfuls of
+white honey. The teeth should be washed with it every night and morning.
+
+To clean the teeth, rub them with the ashes of burned bread. It must be
+thoroughly burned, not charred.
+
+Spite of all that is said against it, charcoal holds the highest place
+as a tooth-powder. It has the property, too, of opposing putrefaction,
+and destroying vices of the gums. It is most conveniently used when
+made into paste with honey.
+
+A fine Cologne is prepared from one gallon of deodorized alcohol, or
+spirit obtained from the Catawba grape, which is nearly if not quite
+equal to the grape spirit which gives Farina Cologne its value. To this
+is added one ounce of oil of lavender, one ounce of oil of orange,
+two drachms of oil of cedrat, one drachm of oil of neroli or orange
+flowers, one drachm of oil of rose, and one drachm of ambergris. Mix
+well, and keep for three weeks in a cool place.
+
+To this list of fragrance add a recipe for common Cologne to use as
+a toilet water. It is oil of bergamot, lavender, and lemon, each one
+drachm; oil of rose and jasmine, each ten drops; essence of ambergris,
+ten drops; spirits of wine, one pint. Mix and keep well closed in a
+cool place for two months, when it will be fit for use. Ladies will
+be grateful for this who have known what trouble it is to find a
+refreshing Cologne which does not smell like cooking extract with lemon
+or vanilla. If with these hints a woman can not keep herself fragrant
+and lovely in person, her case must need the help of the physician.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ Morals of Paint and Powder.--Antique Toilet Arts.--Washington
+   Ladies.--Making Up the Face.--Whitening the Arms.--Tints of
+   Rouge.--To Make French Rouge.--Milk of Roses.--Greuze Tints.--Coarse
+   Complexions Caused by Powder.--Color for the Lips.--Crystal and Gold
+   Hair Powder.--Dyeing Blonde Wigs.--To Darken the Hair.--Champagne and
+   Black-Walnut Bark.--Doom of the Complexion Artist.
+
+
+The time has gone by when it was a matter of church discipline if a
+woman painted her face or wore powder. Nor is it any serious reflection
+on her moral character if she go abroad with her complexion made up
+in the forenoon, however it may call her taste in question. All who
+paint their faces and look forth at their windows are not visited with
+hard names, else the parlor of every house on the side-streets of New
+York might have its Jezebel waiting the dinner-hour and the return
+of masculine admirers. George declares he could never own a wife who
+used powder; and yet Annie comes down, looking innocent in her pink
+bows, with a little white bloom on each temple, and a suspicious odor
+of Lubin’s Violet floating round her. I don’t think George meditates
+divorce on that account. There is something noble and ingenuous in the
+sight of an uncovered skin; but we reconcile ourselves to the pearly
+falsehood, accepting the situation with the false hair, not so gray as
+it is in front, and the long, artificial-shaped nails, and the cramped
+feet. Every body knows they are inventions, and accepts them as such,
+like paste brilliants at a theatre.
+
+The arts of the toilet are as old as Thebes. The painted eye of
+desire, the burning cheek and dyed nails, were coeval with the
+wisdom of Alexandria. Of old the Roman ladies used the fine dust of
+calcined shells and the juices of plants to restore their freshness
+of color. There is no end to the modern contrivances for the same
+purpose. Crushed geranium leaves, and the petals of artificial roses
+which contain carmine, friction with red flannel, and the juice of
+strawberries, are homely substitutes for rouge. The women of the South
+are more given to the use of cosmetics than their Northern sisters.
+Perhaps Washington sets the example to all the states; for nowhere else
+is seen such liberal use of paint and powder, skillfully applied, as
+at the capital. There women paint for the breakfast-table, and carry
+the deception every where. The Spanish-American ladies make the absurd
+mistake of supposing their rich complexions and dark eyes are not more
+enticing to Northern eyes than our own cold beauties; so, by the help
+of toilet bottles, they present faces like Lady Washington geraniums
+from nine in the morning till they ice themselves to frozen whiteness
+for the evenings. Whited sepulchres is the phrase forever ringing in
+one’s head at sight of this folly. What indignation has seized one at
+sight of Madame ----, the witty and enviable, who had the weakness to
+mask her lustrous, tropical, Murillo colors--which enchanted every
+Northern heart--with poor plaster of burned oyster-shells! It was very
+well for the Treasury blondes, who looked like human peaches till one
+saw them close, to dabble in white and pink. It suited their style. For
+these superb Creoles and Sevillians, never!
+
+Both from principle and preference, this book discountenances paint and
+powder. It believes that a woman needs no other cosmetics than fresh
+air, exercise, and pure water, which, if freely used, will impart a
+ruddier glow and more pearly tint to the face than all the rouge and
+lily-white in Christendom.
+
+But if she must resort to artificial beauty, let her be artistic about
+it, and not lay on paint as one would furniture polish, to be rubbed
+in with rags. The best and cheapest powder is refined chalk in little
+pellets, each enough for an application. Powder is a protection and
+comfort on long journeys or in the city dust. If the pores of the skin
+must be filled, one would prefer clean dust, to begin with. A layer
+of powder will prevent freckles and sun-burn when properly applied.
+It cools feverish skins, and its use can be condoned when it modifies
+the contrast between red arms and white evening dresses. In amateur
+theatricals it is indispensable, the foot-lights throwing the worst
+construction on even good complexions. In all these cases it is worth
+while to know how to use it well. The skin should be as clean and cool
+as possible, to begin. A pellet of chalk, without any poisonous bismuth
+in it, should be wrapped in coarse linen and crushed in water, grinding
+it well between the fingers. Then wash the face quickly with the
+linen, and the wet powder oozes in its finest state through the cloth,
+leaving a pure white deposit when dry. Press the face lightly with a
+damp handkerchief to remove superfluous powder, wiping the brows and
+nostrils free. This mode of using chalk is less easily detected than
+when it is dusted on dry.
+
+The best foundation for Lubin’s powder is gained by soaping the face
+well, and taking care not to rinse off all the smooth, glossy feeling
+it leaves. Dry the face without wiping, and the thinnest layer of oil
+is left, which holds the dry powder, without that mealy look which
+Lubin is apt to leave. To whiten the arms for theatricals, rub them
+first with glycerine, not letting the skin absorb it all, and apply
+chalk. The country practice is to substitute a tallow candle for the
+glycerine; but ours is a progressive age. At least the moral feeling
+leads one to spare an escort’s coat-sleeve.
+
+Rouge needs consideration before rashly applying. There are more tints
+of complexion than there are roses, and one can only be successful by
+observing the natural colors of a beauty of her own type. Some cheeks
+have a wine-like, purplish glow, others a transparent saffron tinge,
+like yellowish-pink porcelain; others still have clear, pale carmine;
+and the rarest of all, that suffused tint like apple blossoms. By
+making her own rouge a lady can graduate her pallet--that is to say,
+her cheeks--at pleasure. The following preparations have the virtue,
+at least, of being harmless, which can not be said of most paints and
+powders. Red-lead, bismuth, arsenic, and poisonous vegetable compounds
+are used in the common cosmetics. Bismuth is most frequent; and its
+least effect is to give the cheeks it has whitened a crop of purplish
+pimples, which would indicate that the wearer was freely “dispoged” to
+the same tastes as Sairey Gamp. The hideously coarse complexion of many
+public singers is partly due to their use of bismuth powder. An old
+dispensatory gives the following formula for a harmless cosmetic under
+the name of Almond Bloom:
+
+Take of Brazil dust, one ounce; water, three pints; boil, strain, and
+add six drachms of isinglass, two of cochineal, three of borax, and an
+ounce of alum; boil again, and strain through a fine cloth. Use as a
+liquid cosmetic.
+
+Devoux French rouge is thus prepared: Carmine, half a drachm; oil of
+almonds, one drachm; French chalk, two ounces. Mix. This makes a dry
+rouge.
+
+The milk of roses is made by mixing four ounces of oil of almonds,
+forty drops of oil of tartar, and half a pint of rose-water with
+carmine to the proper shade. This is very soothing to the skin.
+Different tinges may be given to the rouge by adding a few flakes of
+indigo for the deep black-rose crimson, or mixing a little pale yellow
+with less carmine for the soft Greuze tints. All preparations for
+darkening the eyebrows, eyelashes, etc., must be put on with a small
+hair-pencil. The “dirty-finger” effect is not good. A fine line of
+black round the rim of the eyelid, when properly done, should not be
+detected, and its effect in softening and enlarging the appearance of
+the eyes is well known by all amateur players. A smeared, blotchy look
+conveys an unpleasant idea of dissipation.
+
+For the finger-tips, alkanet makes a good stain. An eighth of an ounce
+of chippings tied in coarse muslin, and soaked for a week in diluted
+alcohol, will give a tincture of lovely dye. The finger-tips should be
+touched with jewelers’ cotton dipped in this mixture.
+
+Hair-powder is made from powdered starch, sifted through muslin, and
+scented with oil of roses in the proportion of twelve drops to the
+pound. Crystal powder is glass dust, obtained from factories, or
+powdered crystallized salts of different kinds. A golden powder may be
+procured by coloring a saturated solution of alum bright yellow with
+turmeric, then allowing it to crystallize, and reducing it to coarse
+powder. This certainly has the merit of cheapness.
+
+Color for the lips is nothing more than cold cream, with a larger
+quantity of wax than usual melted in it, with a few drachms of carmine.
+For vermilion tint use a strong infusion of alkanet instead of
+poisonous red-lead. Keep the chippings for a week in the almond-oil of
+which the cold cream is made, and afterward incorporate with wax and
+spermaceti. Always tie alkanet in muslin when it is used for coloring
+purposes.
+
+When blonde wigs are not attainable for theatricals, a switch of dark
+hair may be bleached by soaking in strong vinegar, and colored by an
+infusion of turmeric in Champagne, or by the liquor obtained from the
+tops of potatoes ready to flower, mixed with water, suffering it to
+steep twenty-four hours. This is too poisonous ever to be used on the
+head with safety.
+
+The walnut stain for skin or hair is made precisely like that for
+cloth, by boiling the bark--say an ounce to a pint of water--for an
+hour, slowly, and adding a lump of alum the size of a thimble to set
+the dye. Apply with a little brush, such as is used in water-colors, to
+the lashes and eyebrows, or with a sponge to the hair. Wrap the head in
+an old handkerchief when going to sleep, or the moisture of the hair
+will stain the pillow-cases.
+
+But one thing must be said: the woman who has once taken to painting
+and coloring must go on painting and coloring; rarely, if ever, does
+the complexion regain its bloom, the skin its smoothness, or the hair
+its gloss. In most cases the operator must go on deepening the hue, and
+in no case can he or she be sure of the shade or tint which successive
+applications will produce.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ Récamier’s Training.--Diana of Poitiers, Bath.--High Beauty of
+   Maturity.--The Worth of Beauty.--George Eliot on Complexions.--Dr.
+   Cazenave.--Barley Paste for the Face.--Prescriptions of the
+   Roman Ladies.--To Remove Pimples.--Cascarilla Wash.--Varnish for
+   Wrinkles.--Acetic Acid for Comedones.--To Remove Mask.--Lady Mary
+   Montagu.--Habit of Italian Ladies.--Wash of Vitriol.
+
+
+The motto that used to haunt our souls over copy-books, “No excellence
+without great labor,” is as true about personal improvement as any
+thing else. Few celebrated beauties have gained their fame without
+use of those arts which must be the earliest of all, since we have
+no record of their first teaching--the arts of the toilette. Madame
+Récamier, who exercised more power by her beauty than any woman of
+modern times, was bred by a most careful mother, versed in all the
+mysteries of training. Her exceeding delicacy of complexion arose from
+the protection she gave it, never going out except in her carriage,
+and scarcely knowing what it was to set foot to the ground. Margaret
+of Anjou and Mary Stuart, in earlier times, were wise as serpents in
+the magic of the toilet, disdaining neither May dew nor less simple
+lotions for cheeks whereon the eye of the world was to dwell. Diana
+of Poitiers bequeathed a legacy of value to her sex in commending the
+use of the rain-water bath, which preserved her own beauty till, at
+the age of sixty-five, no one could be insensible to her. Ninon de
+l’Enclos left the same testimony. It is intolerable that women have not
+the ambition to preserve their health and charms to the latest date,
+and give up their cases so shamefully soon. An intelligent maturity
+chisels and refines the face to a high and feeling beauty; that is to
+the attractions of youth what the aristocratic head of Booth would
+be beside a pink-and-white lady-killer of society. This serene and
+finished expression should find physical favor to accompany it. Nor is
+this to be gained, as many say, by leading a passive, emotionless life.
+People of vivid feeling are the youngest. Their quick alterations of
+mood make the face clean cut, yet do not settle it in uniform furrows.
+Both grief and joy, yearning passion and utter renunciation, are needed
+to sculpture finely the statues for remembrance. No one professing
+the loftiest aims, who understands human nature, can despise the care
+of personal beauty when, combined with moral worth, its influence is
+so irresistible. Look at the portraits of those renowned as moral
+and intellectual heroes; it will be found their greatness was rarely
+associated with physical repulsiveness, and though their faces in the
+conflicts of life grew seamed and worn, yet in youth they must have
+been more than ordinarily remarked for beauty of a high order--Columbus
+and Galileo and Whitefield will do for examples. And if the reader
+go through the range of feminine celebrities, from the poets to
+missionary biographies, “with portrait of the original,” not one face
+in ten will dispute what I have said.
+
+Least of all let any woman heed smiling scorn of her weakness in taking
+pains to secure a good complexion--the real clearness and color, if
+she eschew the coarse pretense of powder and paint. George Eliot,
+with her masculine sense, bears witness to the irresistible tendency
+to associate a pure soul with a lucent complexion. No woman can be
+disagreeable if she have this saving claim; and there will be no
+apology for adding a few estimable recipes for the purpose from the
+collection of a foreign physician, Dr. Cazenave. He recommends the
+following as a composition for the face:
+
+Three ounces of ground barley, one ounce of honey, and the white of
+one egg, mixed to a paste, and spread thickly on the cheeks, nose, and
+forehead, before going to bed. This must remain all night, protecting
+the face by a soft handkerchief, or bits of lawn laid over the parts
+on which the paste is applied. Wash it off with warm water, wetting the
+surface with a sponge, and letting it soften while dressing the hair
+or finishing one’s bath. Repeat nightly till the skin grows perfectly
+fine and soft, which should be in three weeks, after which it will be
+enough to use it once a week. Always wash the face with warm water and
+mild soap, rubbing on a little cold cream when exposing one’s self to
+the weather. This paste was used by the Romans. With this, care _must_
+be taken to bathe daily in warm water, using soap freely, toning the
+system with a cold plunge afterward, if one can bear it.
+
+For pimples use this recipe: thirty-six grains of bicarbonate of soda,
+one drachm of glycerine, one ounce of spermaceti ointment. Rub on the
+face; let it remain for a quarter of an hour, and wipe off all but a
+slight film with a soft cloth.
+
+The best wash for the complexion given is cascarilla powder, two
+grains; muriate of ammonia, two grains; emulsion of almonds, eight
+ounces: apply with fine linen. The frightful discoloration known as
+_mask_ is removed by a wash made from thirty grains of the chlorate
+of potash in eight ounces of rose-water. Wrinkles are less apparent
+under a kind of varnish containing thirty-six grains of turpentine in
+three drachms of alcohol, allowed to dry on the face. The black worms
+called comedones call forth the simple specific of thirty-six grains
+of subcarbonate of soda in eight ounces of distilled water, perfumed
+with six drachms of essence of roses. But I prefer the advice of a
+clever home physician, who lately told me that he removed comedones
+from the faces of girls who applied to him for the purpose by touching
+the head of each with a fine hair-pencil dipped in acetic acid--a nice
+operation, as the acid must only touch the black spot, or it will
+eat the skin. Remembering that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu quoted the
+habit of Italian ladies to renew and refine their complexions by a
+wash of vitriol, I begged to know how such a heroic application could
+safely be made. The answer was that muriatic acid, sixty per cent.
+strong, diluted in twelve parts of water, might be used as a wash, and
+gradually eat away the coarse outer envelope of the skin, if any one
+had fortitude to bear a slow cautery like this. Lady Mary records that
+she had to shut herself up most of a week, and her face meantime was
+blistered shockingly; but afterward the Italian ladies assured her that
+her complexion was vastly improved. On the whole, the typhoid fever is
+preferable as an agent for clearing the complexion, being perhaps less
+dangerous and more effective.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ Shining Pallor.--Lustrous Faces.--Golden Freckles.--Tiger-Lily
+   Spots.--Sun Photographs.--Nitre Removes Freckles.--Old English
+   Prescription.--For Yachting.--Almond-Oil.--Buttermilk as a
+   Cosmetic.--Rosemary and Glycerine.--Lotion for Prickly Heat.--For
+   Musquitoes.--Protecting Hair from Sea Air.--Fashionable
+   Gray Hair.--Dark Eyes and Silver Hair.--To Restore Dark
+   Hair.--Bandoline.--Cold Cream.--Almond Pomade.--For Skin
+   Diseases.--Sulphurous Acid.
+
+
+The summer heats, which make nature lovely, are the bane of our
+fair-skinned Northern girls. Southern frames receive the glowing
+warmth, and grow paler and paler, because--giving a matter of fact
+explanation of a beautiful appearance--the surface of the skin is
+cooled by the perspiration, and the blood retreats to the central
+veins. The “shining pallor” which poets love on the faces of their
+favorite creations is the sign and effect of concentrated passion of
+any kind in a quick, electric nature. I disbelieved in the expression
+a long time, classing it with the “marble flush” and such freaks of
+nature in novels; but the peculiar look has come under my eye more than
+once. It is a very striking one, as if the light came from within--a
+lustrous, elevated expression, too ethereal and of the spirit to be
+merely high-bred. It is one of the refinements Nature gives to her
+ideal pieces of humanity, and nothing coarse lurks in the creation of
+the one who presents it. The Southern pallor is quite different--a
+dead but clear olive, very admirable when the skin is fine. Northern
+paleness is relieved rather than disfigured by a few golden freckles.
+They are more piquant than otherwise; and girls with the pure
+complexion which attends auburn, blonde, and brown hair ought to
+consider them as caprices of nature to blend the hues of bright, warm
+hair and snowy skin. When as large, and almost as dark as the patches
+on the tiger-lily, every one will find them something to get rid of
+with dispatch. Freckles indicate an excess of iron in the blood, the
+sun acting on the particles in the skin as it does on indelible ink,
+bringing out the color. A very simple way of removing them is said to
+be as follows:
+
+Take finely powdered nitre (saltpetre), and apply it to the freckles
+by the finger moistened with water and dipped in the powder. When
+perfectly done and judiciously repeated, it will remove them
+effectually without trouble.
+
+An old English prescription for the skin is to take half a pint of
+blue skim-milk, slice into it as much cucumber as it will cover, and
+let it stand an hour; then bathe the face and hands, washing them
+off with fair water when the cucumber extract is dry. The latter is
+said to stimulate the growth of hair where it is lacking, if well and
+frequently rubbed in. It would be worth while to apply it to high
+foreheads and bald crowns.
+
+Rough skins, from exposure to the wind in riding, rowing, or yachting,
+trouble many ladies, who will be glad to know that an application of
+cold cream or glycerine at night, washed off with fine carbolic soap
+in the morning, will render them presentable at the breakfast-table,
+without looking like women who follow the hounds, blowzy and burned.
+The simplest way to obviate the bad effects of too free sun and wind,
+which are apt on occasion to revenge themselves for the neglect too
+often shown them by the fair sex, is to rub the face, throat, and arms
+well with cold cream or pure almond-oil _before_ going out. With this
+precaution one may come home from a berry-party or a sail without a
+trace of that ginger-bread effect too apt to follow those pleasures.
+Cold cream made from almond-oil, with no lard or tallow about it,
+will answer every end proposed by the use of buttermilk, a favorite
+country prescription, but one which young ladies can hardly prefer as a
+cosmetic on account of its odor.
+
+A delicate and effective preparation for rough skins, eruptive
+diseases, cuts, or ulcers is found in a mixture of one ounce of
+glycerine, half an ounce of rosemary-water, and twenty drops of
+carbolic acid. In those dreaded irritations of the skin occurring in
+summer, such as hives or prickly heat, this wash gives soothing relief.
+The carbolic acid neutralizes the poison of the blood, purifies and
+disinfects the eruption, and heals it rapidly. A solution of this
+acid, say fifty drops to an ounce of the glycerine, applied at night,
+forms a protection from musquitoes. Though many people consider the
+remedy equal to the disease, constant use very soon reconciles one
+to the creosotic odor of the carbolic acid, especially if the pure
+crystallized form is used, which is far less overpowering in its
+fragrance than the common sort. Those who dislike it too much to use it
+at night, will find the sting of the bites almost miraculously cured
+and the blotches removed by touching them with the mixture in the
+morning. This is penned with grateful recollection of its efficiency
+after the bites of Jersey musquitoes a few nights ago. Babies and
+children should be touched with it in reduced form, to relieve the
+pain they feel from insect bites, but do not know how to express except
+by worrying. Two or three drops of attar of roses in the preparation
+disguises the smell so as to render it tolerable to human beings,
+though not so to musquitoes.
+
+Ladies who find that sea air turns their hair gray, or who are fearful
+of such a result, should keep it carefully oiled with some vegetable
+oil; not glycerine, as that combines with water too readily to protect
+the locks. The recipe for cold cream made with more of the almond-oil,
+so as to form a salve, is not a bad sea-dressing for the hair, and the
+spermaceti and wax render it less greasy than ordinary preparations.
+Animal pomades grow rancid, and make the head most unpleasant to touch
+and smell.
+
+Many preparations are given to restore the color to dark hair when it
+is lost through ill health or over-study. The fashionables to-day,
+with true taste, admire gray hair when in profusion, and deem it
+distinguished when accompanied by dark eyes, to which the contrast
+adds a piercing lustre. But those who consider themselves defrauded of
+their natural tints may use this recipe: Tincture of acetate of iron,
+one ounce; water, one pint; glycerine, half an ounce; sulphuret of
+potassium, five grains. Mix well, and let the bottle remain uncovered
+to pass out the foul smell arising from the potassium. Afterward add a
+few drops of ambergris or attar of roses. Rub a little of this daily
+into the hair, which it will restore to its original color, and benefit
+the health of the scalp.
+
+Ladies are annoyed by the tendency of their hair to come out of crimp
+or curl while boating or horseback-riding. The only help is to apply
+the following bandoline before putting the hair in papers or irons: A
+quarter of an ounce of gum-tragacanth, one pint of rose-water, five
+drops of glycerine; mix and let stand overnight. If the tragacanth is
+not dissolved, let it be half a day longer; if too thick, add more
+rose-water, and let it be for some hours. When it is a smooth solution,
+nearly as thin as glycerine, it is fit to use. This is excellent for
+making the hair curl. Moisten a lock of hair with it, not too wet, and
+brush round a warm curling-iron, or put up in papillotes. If the curl
+come out harsh and stiff, brush it round a cold iron or curling-stick
+with a very little of the cosmetic for keeping stray hair in place,
+or cold cream. To the recipe given in the last chapter another is
+added, of perhaps finer proportions: Oil of sweet almonds, five parts;
+spermaceti, three parts; white wax, half a part; attar of roses, three
+to five drops. Melt together in a shallow dish, over hot water, strain
+through a piece of muslin when melted, and as it begins to cool beat
+it with a silver spoon till quite cold and of a snowy whiteness. It is
+well to rub it smooth on a slab of marble or porcelain before putting
+in glass boxes to keep. For the hair use seven parts of almond-oil to
+the other proportions named. The secret of making fine cold cream lies
+in stirring and beating it well all the time it is cooling.
+
+Those who have the misfortune to contract cutaneous disorders arising
+from exposure to the contact of the low and degraded--and charitable
+persons sometimes run narrow risks of this kind--or from scorbutic
+affections or the fumes of certain medicines, each and any of which
+are liable to produce roughness and inflammation of the skin, will be
+glad of a speedy and certain cure for their affliction. It is a wash
+of sulphurous acid (not sulphuric), diluted in the proportion of three
+parts of soft water to one of the acid, and used three or four times a
+day till relieved. I knew a young lady whose fine complexion was ruined
+by the fumes of medicine she administered to her grandmother, whom
+she tended with religious care; and, thinking there may be others in
+like case, hasten to give this prescription. _Sub rosa_--all parasites
+on furniture, human beings, or pets are quickly destroyed by this
+application.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ Service of Beauty.--Not for Vanity, but Perfection.--Eyebrows of
+   Petrarch’s Laura.--Fashionable Baths.--Trimming the
+   Eyelashes.--Luxury of the Toilet.--Its Magnetic Influence.--A Safe
+   Stimulant.--Amateurs of the Toilet.--Cosmetic Gloves.--To Refine the
+   Skin of the Shoulders and Arms.--Sulphate of Quinine for the
+   Hair.--For the Eyebrows and Eyelashes.--A Harmless Dye.--To Remove
+   Sallowness.--A Hint for Stout People.--Perfumed Bathing-powder.
+
+
+It is a wonder that so few educated people address themselves to the
+service of beauty in the human form. It is refined to study draperies
+or design costumes for the adornment of the body, but not to develop
+the perfection of the body itself. Hair-dressers, perfumers, and
+tailors find ample consolation for being the ninth part of men, or
+something less, in public estimation, since the world finds their work
+a necessity, and amply repays it. Who make fortunes faster among the
+working-classes than those who minister to the desire for beauty, let
+us call it, rather than the severer name of vanity? The arts of the
+toilet are advanced to the rank of a profession abroad. English fashion
+journals declare this in their advertisements. Establishments in London
+and at fashionable watering-places offer brightly furnished parlors
+where one may enjoy the luxurious soothing of every appliance of the
+toilet in succession. The warm bath, in all the appealing pleasure of
+marble, porcelain, and gold, instead of dingy oil-cloths and reeking
+zinc basins, gives place to the deft hands of the hair-bather and the
+chiropodist, and these to the dresser, who arranges the locks, quickly
+and artificially dried, in the most elegantly simple style. Then comes
+the cosmetic artist, who removes blotches and specks from the face
+with quick acids, laves it with soothing washes, or applies emollient
+pastes which leave soft freshness behind. The vulgarity of paint and
+enamel is not allowed in these establishments, though the operators
+have good knowledge of all secrets of their art. Innoxious dyes are
+used as novices never can apply them, superfluous hairs are removed,
+and eyebrows and eyelashes are cared for by the most skillful hands.
+The former have every unnecessary hair removed, and are thinned to
+the penciled line they form in the portraits of Venetian ladies, who
+secured this peculiar charm in the same way. If I could only find out
+how Petrarch’s Laura trimmed her eyebrows, and give the method to my
+readers!
+
+With a pair of fairy-like scissors the lashes are trimmed a
+hair-breadth, and brushed with sable pencils conveying an ointment
+which increases their growth. The nails are polished, and the hands
+indued with soft and perfumed oils which leave no trace. Picture the
+luxury of such a place and such attention, instead of the frowzy rooms
+and careless servants of a common hair-dressing saloon! The magnetic
+benefit of such operations ought to count for much in elegant physical
+culture. It unmistakably soothes the system, and freshens its powers
+better than any narcotic stimulant. More than one of the most brilliant
+writers of the time is in the habit of bathing and making a full
+toilet before composition, feeling its magic influence on the mind in
+rendering one’s thoughts bright and happy.
+
+But blessed water and simples, chemicals and strokings, do their work
+in stone-ware and top bedrooms as well as in baths lined with porcelain
+behind the portière of a Pompadour dressing-room. Clever girls can do
+much for each other in these matters; and let me hope no one will have
+to ask more than sixteen people before finding a friend with nerve
+enough to trim her eyelashes for her, as an ambitious maiden once did.
+A fresh handful of prescriptions for these amateurs is taken from Paris
+authorities.
+
+Cosmetic gloves for which there is such demand are spread inside with
+the following preparation: The yolks of two fresh eggs beaten with two
+teaspoonfuls of the oil of sweet almonds, one ounce of rose-water, and
+thirty-six drops of tincture of benzoin. Make a paste of this, and
+either anoint the gloves with it, or spread it freely on the hands
+and draw the gloves on afterward. Of course there is no virtue in
+the gloves save as they protect the hands from drying or soiling the
+bed-linen.
+
+A paste for the skin of the shoulders and arms is made from the whites
+of four eggs boiled in rose-water, with the addition of a grain or two
+of alum, beaten till thick. Spread this on the skin and cover with old
+linen. Wear it overnight, or all the afternoon before a party where one
+desires to appear in full dress. This cosmetic gives great firmness
+and purity to the skin, and may be used to advantage by persons having
+soft, flabby flesh.
+
+A wash to stimulate the growth of hair in case of baldness is made
+from equal parts of the tincture of sulphate of quinine and aromatic
+tincture.
+
+For causing the eyebrows to grow when lost by fire, use the sulphate of
+quinine--five grains in an ounce of alcohol.
+
+For the eyelashes, five grains of the sulphate in an ounce of sweet
+almond-oil is the best prescription; put on the roots of the lashes
+with the finest sable pencil. This must be lightly applied, for it
+irritates the eye to finger it.
+
+The best dye is this French recipe, which is seen to be harmless at a
+glance: Melt together, in a bowl set in boiling water, four ounces of
+white wax in nine ounces of olive-oil, stirring in, when melted and
+mixed, two ounces of burned cork in powder. This will not take the dull
+bluish tinge of metallic dyes, but gives a lustrous blackness to the
+hair like life. To apply it, put on old gloves, cover the shoulders
+carefully to protect the dress, and spread the salvy preparation like
+pomade on the head, brushing it well in and through the hair. It
+changes the color instantly, as it is a black dressing rather than a
+dye. A brown tint may be given by steeping an ounce of walnut bark,
+tied in coarse close muslin, in the oil for a week before boiling. The
+bark is to be had at any large drug-store, for about thirty cents an
+ounce.
+
+The recipes which follow will be of special value in the warm days of
+early spring. The first contains nearly all the vegetable medicines
+in common use for purifying the blood, and will prevent the lassitude
+and bilious symptoms which overcloud many a sweet spring day. When
+made by one’s own hand, so that the purity and excellence of the
+ingredients can be insured, the mixture is far better than most of
+the blood-purifiers and tonics prescribed by the faculty. It is given
+here because it removes the sallowness and unhealthy iris hues of the
+complexion at a season when a girl’s cheek should wear its brightest,
+clearest flame.
+
+Half an ounce each of spruce, hemlock, and sarsaparilla bark,
+dandelion, burdock, and yellow dock, in one gallon of water; boil half
+an hour, strain hot, and add ten drops of oil of spruce and sassafras
+mixed. When cold, add half a pound of brown sugar and half a cup of
+yeast. Let it stand twelve hours in a jar covered tight, and bottle.
+Use this freely as an iced drink. This is a good recipe for the root
+beer which New Yorkers like to taste during warm months.
+
+People inclined to embonpoint feel the burden of mortality oppressive
+during the first heats of the calendar. They will be glad to hear from
+a hill-country doctor, whose praise is in many households, that a
+strong decoction of sassafras drunk frequently will reduce the flesh as
+rapidly as any remedy known. Take it either iced or hot, as fancied,
+with sugar if preferred. It is not advisable, however, to take this
+tea in certain states of health, and the family physician should be
+consulted before taking it. A strong infusion is made at the rate of
+an ounce of sassafras to a quart of water. Boil it half an hour very
+slowly, and let it stand till cold, heating again if desired, and
+keeping it from the air.
+
+A trouble scarcely to be named among refined persons is profuse
+perspiration, which ruins clothing and comfort alike. For this it is
+recommended to bathe the feet, hands, and parts of the body where the
+secretion is greatest with cold infusion of rosemary, sage, or thyme,
+and afterward dust the stockings and under-garments with a mixture
+of two and a half drachms of camphor, four ounces of orris-root, and
+sixteen ounces of starch, the whole reduced to impalpable powder. Tie
+it in a coarse muslin bag, and shake it over the clothes. This makes a
+very fine bathing-powder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ Hope for Homely People.--Two Vital Charms.--The Way to Live.--Sunrise
+   and Open Air.--Bleached by the Dawn.--Live at Sunny Windows.--In
+   Balconies and Parks.--Christiana’s Breakfast.--Brown Steak and
+   Good-humor.--True Bread.--Device for Stiff Shoulders.--Corsets and
+   Girdles.--The Latter more Needed.--How to be Pleased with One’s Self.
+
+
+Is there such a being as a hopelessly homely woman? In the light of
+modern appliances, study the faces and figures one meets on a journey
+from the sea-board to the interior, and confess that there are few
+fatally ugly women. On the railway I often amuse myself, in default of
+better things, by considering how hygiene, cosmetics, and good taste in
+dress would transform the common-looking women about one into charming
+and even striking personages. In most of them, all that is wanting is
+strength of expression and a clear complexion, two things with which
+no woman can be wholly unattractive. The one is the sign of mental,
+the other of physical health. No wonder nature makes them so winning.
+To show what I mean, let us mention some common faults, and their
+antidotes. Nothing is more delightful than pulling our neighbors to
+pieces, with a good motive for it.
+
+Christiana is over thirty--no reason in the least why she should not
+be as admired as a three days’ rose, for one of the most beautiful
+women in New York, whom every one is infatuated with, is over sixty.
+Yet nobody thinks of Christiana’s looks, for the simple reason that
+she has given up thinking of them herself--believing her poor skin
+can not be improved, nor the stiff, high carriage of her shoulders
+be changed. The depth of her eyes and her really good color are lost
+with these defects. To judge how the remedies should be applied,
+scrutinize her entire mode of living. Sunrise, in January or June,
+and she is not up! This will never serve a candidate for beauty. The
+first rays of the sun, the purity of early air, have as potent an
+effect on the complexion as the noon rays on the webs of linen in the
+bleaching-ground. By all means, if one must rob daylight for sleep,
+take the hours from ten to three, but see the fires in the east from
+out-of-doors, even if your head touched the pillow only two hours
+before. I don’t believe in any special morality in getting up early,
+but I do know its benefits on nerves and circulation of the blood.
+There is a tonic in the dew-cool air, a lingering of night’s romance,
+that stirs while it soothes the blood like a fine magnetic hand.
+
+But getting up and staying in the house won’t improve one’s complexion.
+How much of her rose-and-lily face the English peasant woman owes
+to her walk to the reaping-field at daybreak is well known. After
+the first soft days of February and March there is nothing to hinder
+Christiana from reading her prayer-book or morning paper on the porch
+in the sunlight, if she choose to do this rather than rake the dead
+leaves from the grass, sweep the steps, or do something to stir her
+laggard blood. If it is cold, let her plant herself at the sunniest
+window, sew, run her machine, lounge, and eat there, till she is no
+more afraid of sunshine than of any other blood relation. Our women
+want to imitate French sense, and sit in the balconies and parks to do
+their work. When they lose the detestable vice of self-consciousness
+that saps American well-being in all ways, they will be able to live at
+their casements, sewing, singing, reading, as thoughtless and unnoticed
+as the white doves soaring above them where the sunshine is widest. It
+is matter of custom merely.
+
+But Christiana’s breakfast is ready by this time, and we will see what
+she eats. Coffee: well, housekeepers buy the ready-ground coffee now,
+and it is mixed trash, wanting the heartiness of a good pure cup, but
+no great harm at worst. Meat: do you call that bit the width of two
+fingers, crisped, greased at one end, raw and bleeding at the other,
+fit sustenance for a woman who is to grow, work, walk, dance, and
+sing to-day? She is made to live neither on leather nor raw meat. Cook
+a slice of thick beef-steak as quickly as possible till the color
+is changed all the way through without drying any of the juice. The
+albumen of the blood must be coagulated before meat is fit for human
+stomachs, and proper cooking means something more than mere warming
+through, and a great deal less than crisping. Now let at least a
+quarter of a pound of this browned and fragrant sacrifice be cut for
+this young woman--better if she eat half a pound--to be converted into
+energetic work and Christian good-humor in the course of the day. One,
+two, three, four slices of fried potato withered in fat! And this is
+what some people call nourishment! Put on her plate two baked potatoes
+of unimpeachable quality--poor potatoes are poison--and let each be
+the size of her small fist. Where are the tomatoes, the celery, the
+artichokes, salads, and sauces? She has tomatoes, three bits in a tiny
+saucerette, as if it held some East Indian condiment. There ought to be
+a saucer piled with them, or some savory vegetable delicately cooked;
+for breakfast ought to be next to the heartiest meal of the day. It is
+far the best way to take coffee and bread on rising, and eat the meal
+later when one has worked into an appetite for it. Those who find it
+impossible to alter their habits enough for this usually have duties
+which ought to call them up long enough before to be quite hungry by
+seven or eight o’clock, the usual hours in this country for breakfast.
+
+Take away that thin slip of toast; it makes one turn invalid to see it.
+What do you call this gray, broad-celled, pallid stuff? Bread--good
+yeast bread? If there is any thing intolerable, it is what the makers
+of it commonly call good home-made bread. It is mealy, or bitter, or
+gray and coarse-grained, sad-looking, with white crust, as if the
+owners were too poor to afford fire to bake it thoroughly. Give me
+poor bread, and I can eat it in a spirit of resignation; but this
+domestic hypocrisy of good bread libels the wheat that made it, and
+arraigns the taste of those who eat it. Were it ever so good, there
+is something better yet--the crisp, unbolted cake that lingers with
+nutty richness on the palate, once tasting of which weans one from the
+impoverished gentility of white bread forever. It is not urged on the
+score of being wholesome. The phrase has been so much abused that the
+cry of “healthful food” invariably suggests something which doesn’t
+taste good. But the strength and richness and coloring of wheat-cake
+recommend it to any breakfast fancier. There is no use aiming at
+fine-grained complexions without the use of coarse bread at every meal.
+A slice of Graham bread at breakfast will not counteract the evil
+tendencies of incorrect diet the rest of the day. When you get your
+coarse bread, two or three slices will not be too much at a meal. Such
+ought to be the breakfast of a young lady who wishes to have roundness
+of contour, unfailing spirits, and self-command, with ready strength
+for walking, working, or study. Brain-work takes food as much as bodily
+labor. Between Mrs. O’Flaherty in the laundry and the faithful lady
+editor of a newspaper, it is probable that the former has the easiest
+time of it, and uses less strength. The women worth any thing are built
+and sustained by hearty feeding. It is so that singers and dancers
+eat, and lecturers and authors--Grisi and Jenny Lind, Mrs. Kemble and
+Ristori, Mrs. Edwards, the novelist, and with her nearly every writer
+of note at this day. They are well-nourished women, whose appetites
+would embarrass the candy-loving sylphs whose usefulness amounts to
+nothing more than that of cheap porcelain. Women who exercise little,
+of course eat little; in the end they can do nothing, because they are
+not sufficiently fed. There is no grossness in eating largely if one
+work well enough to consume the strength afforded. The best engines
+are best fed. The grossness lies in eating and being idle. A woman who
+limits her exertions to a walk around the squares daily may confine
+herself to a slice of toast and a strip of meat. She will grow thin
+and watery-looking, nervous and “high-strung,” to pay for it. To know
+what charm there is in womanhood, go among the girls brought up in
+villages along the coast. The well-poised shoulders that have a will
+of their own, the round arms and necks, the profusion of hair, the
+strength and nerve combined in their movements, give one the idea of
+walking statuary. The poor drooping figures, the stiff shoulders we
+complain of, come from one cause--lack of nutrition. Their muscles are
+not strong enough to hold them erect, and their nerves are not fed
+enough to stimulate the weak muscles to activity. How many times must
+it be said over? Want of sunshine and nourishing food gives the coarse,
+uninteresting look to most American women.
+
+If Christiana would invoke mechanical aid to bring down her high
+shoulders and put flexibility into her chest muscles, after thirty
+years of abuse, it is easily done. Walking with a pail of water in
+each hand is rather dull work unless there is a call for domestic
+help. A homely but very effectual way of educating the muscles is to
+wear weights fastened to the shoulders. A shawl-strap answers every
+purpose, buckled on the shoulders with the handle between them on the
+back, and fastening a flat-iron of five or six pounds’ weight to the
+straps which hang under the arms. An extra buckle may be sewed half-way
+down each strap, to fasten the iron on the end by a second loop. The
+weights may be worn while reading or writing for hours, and will be
+found rather agreeable to balance the stooping propensity by throwing
+the stress on fresh muscles. With or without it, nine tenths of women
+from eighteen years old upward will need another simple support to
+relieve the muscles of the trunk below the waist. It matters little
+what causes this feebleness, whether too hard work, the weight of
+skirts, or degeneration of the muscular fibre from want of exercise and
+lack of fresh air. Its relief is imperative to preserve bloom and life
+of any kind worth calling life. If any girl or woman can not dance, run
+up stairs, take long walks, or stand about the house-work, no matter
+how slight the fatigue, support must be provided. Women wear corsets,
+and say they can not exist without them, when the demand for aid of the
+relaxed muscles of the hips and back, though far more imperative, is
+neglected. The means are very simple: a bandage of linen toweling, soft
+and cool, buckled, tied, or pinned, as tight as will be comfortable,
+and so arranged as to relieve every muscle that feels fatigue. This is
+worth all the manufactured appliances in the market, and its prompt use
+averts a hundred distressing consequences. At the first approach of
+debility these girdles should be worn, as they have been from ancient
+times among Greek and Jewish women. It is not sure that their office
+of prevention is not more essential than that of cure. Tight corsets
+are an abomination, for they interfere with flexibility, and so with
+that constant exercise of the trunk muscles which alone can keep them
+in tone--keep them from degeneration and atrophy. As to the muscles of
+the back and abdomen affected by the girdle, a degree of support just
+sufficient to encourage them to their work, and prevent their giving it
+up in fatigue and despair, will exercise and strengthen them. A bandage
+tighter than is needed for this will do harm, not only by keeping the
+muscles idle, and so weakening them, but by compressing the abdominal
+viscera, and thus producing numerous evils.
+
+There is a game children play called “wring the towel,” in which two
+clasp hands and whirl their arms over their heads without losing hold,
+that every woman ought to practice to keep her muscles flexible. Hardly
+any exercise could be devised which would give play to so many muscles
+at once. A woman ought to be as lithe from head to heel as a willow
+wand, not for the sake of beauty only, but for the varied duties and
+functions she must perform.
+
+It would be an artistic feat to take Christiana through a course of
+baths, diet, sun-sittings, and open-air walks, to show her to herself.
+The oleander glow on firm cheeks, the eye of light, the tread of Diana,
+the buoyancy of body that fosters buoyancy of mind and spirits, would
+please her with herself.
+
+How dexterously Nature inserts the reward of beauty before the
+self-denials needed to gain health! A thoroughly healthy woman never is
+unbeautiful. She is full of life, and vivacity shines in her face and
+manner, while her magnetism attracts every creature who comes within
+its influence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ The Bonniest Kate in Christendom.--A Word to Mothers and
+   Aunts.--Different Vanities.--The Sorrows of Ugly Women.--Recipes of
+   an Ancient Beauty.--Sand Wash.--Color for the Nails.--Embrocation
+   for the Hands.--Soap to Bleach the Arms.--Freckle Lotions.--Artistic
+   Enthusiasm at the Toilet.
+
+
+Was the last chapter too much of a sermon on Christiana’s breakfast?
+You think so, Kate, who are longing to learn some art that may make
+you the bonniest Kate in Christendom. You say your hands are rough and
+unsightly, your hair grows where you do not want it, and is none too
+thick where it ought to be. Your eyebrows are bushy--a most unfeminine
+trait, that makes you look fierce as a lamb with mustaches. You don’t
+seem lovely to yourself, and this consciousness makes you stiff and shy
+in your manner. Somebody is to blame for this state of things. Either
+your mother, or your aunt, or the lady principal of the school where
+you studied, ought to have taken you in hand before you were fourteen,
+and showed you the remedies for these defects that were to affect your
+spirits and comfort in after-life. A girl should be taught to take care
+of her skin and hair just as she is to hold her dress out of the dust,
+and not to crumple her sash when she sits down. One thing will not
+make her vain more than another. There are many vanities to be found
+in women’s character. One is vain of knowing three languages, one of
+her Sunday-school devotion, another of her pattern temper, and one of
+her pretty face. Of all these errors, the last is most endurable. Every
+attraction filched from a girl by neglect or design is so much stolen
+from her dowry that never can be replaced.
+
+Victor Hugo says that he who would know suffering should learn the
+sorrows of women. Let him say of ugly women, and he will touch the
+depth of bitterness. What tears the plain ones shed on silent pillows,
+shrinking even from the pale, beautiful moonshine that contrasts so
+fatally with their homeliness. They would give years of life to win
+one of beauty. This regret is natural, irresistible, and not to be
+forbidden. Better let the grief have its way till the busy period of
+life takes a woman’s thoughts off herself, and she forgets to care
+whether she is beautiful or not. Dam up the sluices of any sorrow, and
+it deepens and grows wider. Is this treating a peculiarly feminine
+regret over-tenderly? This is written in remembrance of a girl who
+thought herself so homely that she absolutely prayed that she might
+die and go to be perfect in heaven. More than one girl makes such a
+wish this night before small mirrors in cottage or mansion chambers,
+with no eye but her own to scan her hopeless features. Why doesn’t some
+one open a school of fine arts, literally _des beaux-arts_, and make a
+greater success than Worth, by improving wearers instead of costumes?
+
+Till that time comes, let us make the best of present resources, and
+consider these recipes, unearthed from an ancient book-shelf belonging
+to a maiden lady who was once, if tradition may be credited, a beauty
+of no mean order. There is one thing to console us, Kate: you and
+I will never have to cry for our lost beauty. Your hands are to be
+pitied, for soft, sensitive fingers are what a woman can least afford
+to lose. They are needed to nurse sick folks, and do quick sewing, and
+handle children with. So we are glad to learn something of this kind.
+
+To soften the hands, fill a wash-basin half full of fine white sand and
+soap-suds as hot as can be borne. Wash the hands in this five minutes
+at a time, brushing and rubbing them in the sand. The best is flint
+sand, or the white powdered quartz sold for filters. It may be used
+repeatedly by pouring the water away after each washing, and adding
+fresh to keep it from blowing about. Rinse in warm lather of fine soap,
+and after drying rub them in dry bran or corn meal. Dust them, and
+finish with rubbing cold cream well into the skin. This effectually
+removes the roughness caused by house-work, and should be used every
+day, first removing ink or vegetable stains with acid.
+
+Always rub the spot with cold cream or oil after using acid on the
+fingers. The cream supplies the place of the natural oil of the skin,
+which the acid removes with the stain.
+
+To give a fine color to the nails, the hands and fingers must be well
+lathered and washed with scented soap; then the nails must be rubbed
+with equal parts of cinnabar and emery, followed by oil of bitter
+almonds. To take white specks from the nails, melt equal parts of pitch
+and turpentine in a small cup; add to it vinegar and powdered sulphur.
+Rub this on the nails, and the specks will soon disappear. Pitch and
+myrrh melted together may be used with the same results.
+
+An embrocation for whitening and softening the hands and arms, which
+dates far back, possibly to King James’s times, is made from myrrh,
+one ounce; honey, four ounces; yellow wax, two ounces; rose-water, six
+ounces. Mix the whole in one well-blended mass for use, melting the
+wax, rose-water, and honey together in a dish over boiling water, and
+adding the myrrh while hot. Rub this thickly over the skin before going
+to bed. It is good for chapped surfaces, and would make an excellent
+mask for the face.
+
+To improve the skin of the hands and arms, the following old English
+recipe is given, the principle of which is now revived in different
+cosmetic combinations. Take two ounces of fine hard soap--old Windsor
+or almond soap--and dissolve it in two ounces of lemon juice. Add one
+ounce of the oil of bitter almonds, and as much oil of tartar. Mix
+the whole, and stir well till it is like soap, and use it to wash the
+hands. This contains the most powerful agents which can safely be
+applied to the skin, and it should not be used on scratches or chapped
+hands. For the latter a delicate ointment is made from three ounces of
+oil of sweet almonds, an ounce of spermaceti, and half an ounce of
+rice flour. Melt these over a slow fire, keep stirring till cold, and
+add a few drops of rose-oil. This makes a good color for the lips by
+mixing a little alkanet powder with it, and may be used to tinge the
+finger-tips. It is at least harmless.
+
+Oil of almonds, spermaceti, white wax, and white sugar-candy, in equal
+parts, melted together, form a good white salve for the lips and cheeks
+in cold weather. A fine cold cream, much pleasanter to use than the
+mixtures of lard and tallow commonly sold under that name, is thus made:
+
+Melt together two ounces of oil of almonds and one drachm each of
+white wax and spermaceti; while warm add two ounces of rose-water, and
+orange-flower water half an ounce. Nothing better than this will be
+found in the range of toilet salves.
+
+A wash “for removing tan, freckles, blotches, and pimples,” as the
+high-sounding preface assures us, is made from two gallons of strong
+soap-suds, to which are added one pint of alcohol and a quarter of a
+pound of rosemary. Apply with a linen rag. This is better when kept in
+a close jar overnight.
+
+Freckle lotion, for the cure of freckles, tan, or sunburned face and
+hands--something which I would prefer to the rosemary wash before
+given, is thus made: Take half a pound of clear ox gall, half a drachm
+each of camphor and burned alum, one drachm of borax, two ounces of
+rock-salt, and the same of rock-candy. This should be mixed and shaken
+well several times a day for three weeks, until the gall becomes
+transparent; then strain it very carefully through filtering-paper,
+which may be had of the druggists. Apply to the face during the day,
+and wash it off at night.
+
+Now, Kate, do you see your way clear to the use and benefit of these
+mixtures? All these articles are to be found at any large druggist’s,
+or, if not, he will tell you where to find them. The rosemary and honey
+may be found in that still fragrant store-room of your aunt’s, in the
+country, unless she has taken to writing very poor serial articles,
+and let the herb garden and the bees run out. To save trouble, take the
+recipes and have them made up at once by the druggist, who understands
+such things; but it is pleasant to dabble in washes and lotions one’s
+self, like the Vicar of Wakefield’s young ladies. Then have you
+patience to persevere in their use? For making one’s self beautiful
+is a work of time and perseverance as much as being an artist, or a
+student, or a Christian. I wish I were with you, and could keep you up
+to your preparations, brush your eyebrows, trim your eyelashes, and
+do the dozen different offices of sympathy and womanly kindness. I
+should feel that I was the artist putting the touches on something more
+valuable than any statue ever moulded. Can you feel so yourself? For if
+you can once get hold of that artistic impulse, you have the secret of
+all these toilet interferences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ A Dark Potion.--Olive-oil and Tar for the Face.--Olive-tar for
+   Inhalation.--Carbolic Lotion for Pimples.--Cure for Musquito
+   Bites.--Pale Blondes.--A French Marquise.--Deepening Colors by
+   Sunlight.--Seductive Cosmetics.--Nose-machine.--Finger Thimbles.
+
+
+Neither distilled waters perfumed like May, nor embrocation smoother
+than velvet, are this time to be offered you. The compound in its
+ugliness is more like a witch’s potion, and the odor is generally
+liked by those only who are used to it. But its merits are equal to
+its ugliness--nay, so firmly am I persuaded of its effectiveness that
+before sundown I doubt not its virtues will be in active test within
+this household. Sea winds will roughen the face, and miscellaneous food
+deteriorate the softest skins. There are wrinkles, too, showing their
+first faint daring on the brow before the glass--wrinkles which had
+no business there for ten years to come, at any rate. “What hand shall
+soothe” their trace away?
+
+It is a hunter’s prescription that comes in use. You will hear of it
+along the Saranac, or up in the Franconia region, where the pines and
+spruces yield fresh resins for its making. It is popular there for
+its efficacy in keeping the black-flies and musquitoes away; yet even
+hunters bear witness to its excellence in leaving the skin fair and
+innocent. Thus runs the formula, simple enough, in all conscience,
+yet how few will have the boldness to try it: Mix one spoonful of
+the best _tar_ in a pint of pure olive or almond-oil, by heating the
+two together in a tin cup set in boiling water. Stir till completely
+mixed and smooth, putting in more oil if the compound is too thick to
+run easily. Rub this on the face when going to bed, and lay patches
+of soft old cloth on the cheeks and forehead to keep the tar from
+rubbing off. The bed-linen must be protected by old sheets folded and
+thrown over the pillows. The odor, when mixed with oil, is not strong
+enough to be unpleasant--some people fancy its suggestion of aromatic
+pine breath--and the black, unpleasant mask washes off easily with
+warm water and soap. The skin comes out, after several applications,
+soft, moist, and tinted like a baby’s. Certainly this wood ointment
+is preferable to the household remedy for coarse skins of wetting in
+buttermilk. Further, it effaces incipient wrinkles by softening and
+refining the skin. The French have long used turpentine to efface
+the marks of age, but the olive-tar is pleasanter. A pint of best
+olive-oil costs about forty cents at the grocer’s; for the tar apply
+to the druggist, who keeps it on hand for inhaling. A spoonful of the
+mixture put in the water vase of a stove gives a faint pine odor to the
+air of a room, which is very soothing to weak lungs. Physicians often
+recommend it.
+
+What is to be done with the malignant little red pimples that crop out
+annoyingly at the close of warm weather? The cause is very plain.
+When cool days check the perspiration, the system must send out matter
+by some other outlet before it can adjust itself to the new state of
+things. Nothing is better for the irritable face than bathing with a
+dilution of carbolic acid--one teaspoonful of the common acid to a
+pint of rose-water. The acid, as usually sold in solution, is about
+one half the strength of really pure acid, which is very hard to find.
+The recipe given above was furnished by a regular physician, and was
+used on a baby, to soothe eruptions caused by heat, with the happiest
+results. Care must be taken not to let the wash get into the eyes,
+as it certainly will smart, though it may not be strong enough to do
+further harm. No more purifying, healing lotion is known to medical
+skill, and its work is speedy. Poor baby was not beautiful with his
+face of unaccustomed spots and blotches, when the laving with the fluid
+began at night, but next morning they were hardly visible. I commend
+this again to mothers as a specific against those irritations with
+which children suffer. For soothing musquito bites alone it is worth
+all the camphor, soda washes, and hartshorn that ever were tried.
+
+There is a word of comfort to-day for those most hopeless cases of
+unloveliness, tow-colored blondes. Light hair of the faintest shade,
+without a tinge of gold or auburn, is now fancied abroad. Chignons of
+pale hair, dressed in abundant frizzes, command nearly as high a price
+as those pure _blondes dorées_ which have been worth so many times
+their weight in gold. Ladies of fashion in France dye their hair, or
+rather bleach it, to this colorless state; and the effect is very
+piquant with dark eyes and complexion. At the fêtes in Paris recently
+a marchioness of daring taste attracted general admiration by her pale
+tresses, relieved by profuse black velvet trimmings. Indeed, the only
+wear for _très blondes_ is black, even if it is only black alpaca,
+with transparent ruches at the neck and wrists. Let such not fear to
+expose themselves to the fiercest sun to gain a shade or two of color
+in the face. If the fine-grained skin which accompanies such hair take
+on a pale, even brown, so much the better for artistic effect. Dark
+eyes will give brilliancy to the dullest face; and dark they must be,
+if the harmless crayon can make them so by skillful shading about the
+light lashes. If ever art is a boon, it is when called in to change the
+sickly whiteness of too blonde brows and lashes. We can hardly expect
+that girls will carry their zeal for coloring so far as to feed for
+months on the meal from sorghum seed, which has the powerful effect
+of deepening the tint of the entire flesh--a phenomenon as true as
+strange; but we must hope that they will live and work in the rays
+of that great beautifier, the sun, which brings out and perfects all
+undeveloped tones in Nature’s painting. Pale eyes darken in exercise
+out-of-doors, and pasty skins grow prismatic like mother-of-pearl,
+in that wonderful way which fascinated Monsieur Taine when he beheld
+the miraculous brows and shoulders of English ladies. The idea did
+not seem to suggest itself to the critical Frenchman, but it will to
+every woman, that these charms were not wholly due to Nature. It is
+bewildering to read the announcements of toilet preparations under
+seductive names--rosaline, blanc de perle, rose-leaf powder, magnolia,
+velvetine, _eau romaine d’or_, and the rest. Think of the potent
+chemistry which waits outside our windows untried! Among the list of
+“eyebrow pencils,” “nail polishes,” and lip salves, a foreign paper
+brings to notice one invention which might be of use--a nose-machine,
+which, we are told, so directs the soft cartilage that an ill-formed
+nose is quickly shaped to perfection. No surgeon will deny that this is
+possible to a great degree. That it would be a boon nobody can doubt,
+seeing how many unfortunates walk the world whose noses have every
+appearance of having been sat upon, or made acquainted with the nether
+millstone. Long thimbles reaching to the second joint for shaping
+fingers are a new device, though something of the kind was used by
+very particular beauties fifty years ago. The only thing women would
+not do to increase their comeliness is to put themselves on the rack,
+unless indeed it were to live healthily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ Removal of Superfluous Hair.--Effects of High Living.--Work of
+   Typhoid Fever.--Roman Tweezers.--Lola Montez’s Recipes.--Paste
+   of Wood-ashes.--Bleaching Arms with Chloride.--Cautions about
+   Depilatories.--Public Baths.--Improving Complexions by the Sulphur
+   Vapor-bath.--How Arabian Women Perfume Themselves.--Profuse Hair,
+   Sign of Nature’s Bounty.
+
+
+A correspondent wishes to know what will remove superfluous hair,
+adding that she is annoyed with such a growth of it on her face
+that she is the remark of her friends. These unfortunate cases are
+the result of morbid constitution, freaks of nature which are to be
+combated as one would eradicate leprosy or scrofula. The extreme growth
+of hair where it should not be comes from gross living, or is inherited
+by young persons from those whose blood was made of too rich materials.
+Living for two or three generations on overlarded meats, plenty of
+pastry, salt meats, ham, and fish, with good old pickles from brine--in
+short, what would be called high living among middle-class people--is
+pretty sure to leave its marks on lip and brow. Sometimes typhoid
+fever steps in and arrests the degeneration by a painful and searching
+process, which, as it were, burns out the vile particles, and, if the
+patient’s strength endure, leaves her almost with a new body. The
+red, scaly skin peels off, and leaves a soft, fresh cuticle, pink as
+a child’s; the dry hair comes out, and a fine, often curling suit
+succeeds it, while moles and feminine mustaches disappear and leave no
+sign. But this fortunate end is not secured to order, and there are
+preferable ways of renewing the habit of body.
+
+For immediate removal of the afflicting shadows which mar a feminine
+face there are many methods. The Romans used tweezers, regularly as we
+do nail-brushes, to pull out stray hairs; and Lola Montez speaks of
+seeing victims of a modern day sitting for hours before the mirror
+painfully pulling out the hairs on their faces. But this often makes
+the matter worse; for if the hairs are broken off, and not pulled up
+by the roots they are sure to grow coarser than before. Often one
+hair pulled out sends two or three to grow in its place. A paste of
+fine wood-ashes left to dry on the skin is said to eat off hairs, and
+is probably as safe as any remedy. The authority on feminine matters
+quoted above recommends very highly a plaster which pulls the hairs
+out by the roots. Spread equal parts of galbanum and pitch plaster
+on a piece of thin leather, and apply to the place desired; let it
+remain three minutes, and pull off suddenly, when it brings the hairs
+with it, and they are said not to grow again. This will probably bring
+the tears into the eyes of any one who tries it; but the courage of
+damsels desiring a smooth face is not to be damped by such trifles
+as an instant’s pain. If the plaster were left on more than three
+minutes, it would be apt to bring the skin with it in coming off. It
+is better to use daily a paste of ashes or caustic soda, left on as
+long as it can be borne, washing with vinegar to take out the alkali,
+and rubbing on sweet-oil to soften the skin, which is left very hard by
+these applications. Applied day after day, it would not fail to kill
+the hair in a month, when it would dry and rub off. This may be used
+on the arms, which might be whitened and cleared of hair together by
+bathing them in a hot solution of chloride of lime as strong as that
+used for bleaching cotton, say two table-spoonfuls to a quart of water.
+Bathe the arms daily in this, as hot as can be borne, for not over
+two minutes, washing afterward in vinegar and water, and rubbing with
+almond or olive-oil. This should be done in a warm room before an open
+window to avoid breathing the fumes of the chloride, which are both
+unpleasant and noxious. Strong soft-soap left to dry on the arms would
+in time eat away any hair. But the trouble is that these strong agents
+eat away the skin almost as soon as they do the hair, and nice care
+must be used to prevent dangerous results. If the blood should be in
+bad order, though not suspected by any one, least of all by the person
+interested, caustic of any sort might eat a hole in the flesh that
+would fester, and be a long time healing. I saw a frightful sore that a
+lady made on her neck, trying to remove a mole with lunar caustic, and
+should advise every one to be careful how they run such painful risks.
+It is not wise to endure pain heroically, thinking to have the matter
+over and done with at once. Better try the applications many times,
+leaving them to do their work gradually and surely.
+
+To lay the foundation of true beauty, the system should be purified
+within as well as without. Nothing is of so much value in this respect
+as the vapor-bath. In all our large cities public establishments exist
+for taking these baths, and their virtues are well appreciated by those
+who once try them. At the largest bathing-houses in New York ladies
+attend regularly for the sole object of improving their complexion.
+Perhaps the most successful form administered is the sulphur
+vapor-bath, which works wonders for neuralgia. It purifies and searches
+the blood, and I have seen a patient who had lost one of the loveliest
+complexions in the world, as she thought forever, come out of her bath
+day after day visibly whitened at each trial. For ladies past youth
+nothing restores such softness and child-like freshness to the cheek or
+such suppleness to the figure. Of course these baths can only be taken
+at places for the purpose, where chemical means are not wanting. I only
+mention them to urge all ladies who have the chance of trying them not
+to fail of doing so, both for pleasure and benefit.
+
+The vapor-bath, pure and simple, has stood for some time among
+household remedies for various ills, and is given by seating the
+undressed patient on a straw or flag chair over a saucer in which is
+a little lighted alcohol, and wrapping chair, patient, and all in
+large blankets. After a few minutes the perspiration streams as if
+he were in a caldron of steam, and may be kept up any length of time.
+Fifteen minutes are enough. A tepid bath should follow, if one is not
+chilled by it, and after that either a good sleep or exercise enough
+to keep one in a glow. Impurities are discharged from the system in
+this way which else might occasion fever. The hair, skin, and nails are
+insensibly renewed and refined by it. There is not the least danger
+of taking cold if the precautions are taken of rubbing dry, dressing
+quickly and warmly, and keeping the blood at its proper heat by work
+or fire--in short, by doing just those things which ought to be done
+should one never go near a vapor-bath.
+
+Arabian women have a similar method of perfuming their bodies by
+sitting over coals on which are cast handfuls of myrrh and spices.
+The heat opens the pores, which receive the fumes, till the skin is
+impregnated with the odor, and the women come out smelling like a
+censer of incense. Twice a week is often enough for the vapor-bath; as
+for the fumigation, some creature doubtless will be wild enough to try
+the experiment once, which will be sufficient for a lifetime. _If she
+do_, she will be very glad to know that ammonia bathing will destroy
+most traces of her adventurous caprice.
+
+A profusion of hair, however, is a sign of nature’s liberality, and
+this growth is found in connection with a strength and generosity of
+constitution that is capable of the best things when duly refined.
+South Americans, with their supple bodies overflowing with vitality,
+have splendid tresses, and so have the Spaniards and Italians. Such
+people are quick and lasting in the dance, own deep tuneful voices,
+move with vigor and ease, and have a luxuriance of blood and spirits,
+which is too precious to restrain or lose. Fasting, denial of pleasant
+food and plenty of it, till one is worn to an anchorite, may do for
+religious penance, but does not reach physical ends so well as moderate
+and satisfying indulgence. If any poor girl think, from reading this
+paper, that she ought to starve and waste herself by sweating because
+she has a pair of mustaches and a coat of hair on her arms, she is
+vastly mistaken. If she want to know what she may eat, let her study
+Professor Blot’s cookery-book. Whatever is there she may eat, _as_ it
+is there, assured that all the delightful French seasoning will not do
+her blood half the injury of a season’s course of pies made after good
+Yankee fashion--the crust half lard and half old butter, the filling
+strong with spice or drenched with essence, as the case may be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ Madame Celnart’s Works of the Toilet.--Literature of Beauty.--Cares
+   of the Toilet.--Arts of Coiffure and Lacing.--How to Hold a
+   Needle Gracefully.--Iris Powder for Tresses.--Arts of Italian
+   Women.--Depilatory used in Harems.--Spirit of Pyrêtre.--Herbs used
+   by Greek Women.--Mexican Pomade.--Dusky Perfumed Marbles.--Lost
+   Perfumes.--Sultanas’ Lotion.--Brilliant Paste for Neck and
+   Arms.--Baking Enamel.
+
+
+If ever a woman deserved a seat in the French Academy for the value of
+her literary labors to her kind, it was Madame Celnart.
+
+The works of this lively author on manners, dress, cosmetics, and
+kindred topics no less interesting to her sex, are found in eight
+small octavos in their native French. The lady was an industrious
+and brilliant writer on themes of the toilet, the household, and
+deportment, on which Mrs. Farrar, author of _The Young Lady’s
+Friend_, of our mothers’ time, and Mrs. Beeton, the editor of _The
+Englishwoman’s Magazine_, in our day, have succeeded her with much
+adornment but hardly equal scope. Madame Celnart talks--one can hardly
+imagine her holding a pen--like a Parisian, with empressement, with
+drollery, precision, and inimitable sprightliness. Her lectures sound
+like those of a gentle old beauty, secure in the charm of her finished
+manner against the loss of her earlier fascinations, telling the
+secrets of her age to a younger generation, with half a smile at their
+readiness to seize these arts, and seriously pointing out the most
+graceful or the most modest way of doing things, with the concern of
+one who is conscious that grace and prudence do not come to all her sex
+by nature. Imagine the arch gentleness with which she opens her work on
+the toilet in such easy, sparkling guise as this:
+
+“_Je viens de feuilleter les arts de plaire, les livres de beauté, et
+autres évangiles des courtisane_,” which may be freely translated,
+“I come to speak of the arts of pleasing, the literature of beauty,
+and other evangels of coquetry.” She has a well-bred curl of disdain
+for “_une allure bourgeoise mesquine_;” but with the reverence of
+a true Frenchwoman, whose creed is her mirror, she pronounces her
+work “_consacré à la toilette, et la conversation de la beauté_.”
+These duties she divides with serious precision into the “_soins
+de la toilette_,” which include cosmetic arts, and “_l’art de se
+coiffer, lacer, et chausser_.” It was indeed an art, in the time of
+hundred-boned corsets without clasps, to lace one’s self, and in the
+days of classic sandals to put on one’s shoes. She is as exact in all
+her details as a school-mistress, though one fancies a covert smile
+on her wise face as she rallies the young demoiselles who dreaded the
+bath--because it was so cold? Oh no; but because their modesty could
+not endure the baring of their person even to themselves. Such, she
+gravely advises, may save their “_pudeur_” by bathing in a peignoir.
+One inevitably recalls Lola Montez’s dedication of her famous _Book
+of Beauty_, “To all men and women who are not afraid of themselves,”
+on encountering these French demoiselles with their conventual
+susceptibility.
+
+The graceful preceptress goes on with directions for sitting, for
+holding one’s needle, for dancing, and holding one’s petticoats out
+of the mud. Nobody will allow that these hints are superfluous who
+notices the varied awkwardness which women fall into who are habitually
+thoughtless on these points. Some of these nice customs may have
+been carried to our shores, possibly with Rochambeau’s French ladies
+at Newport or Salem. I remember hearing one of the fine Newburyport
+ladies, who answer to the description of gentlewomen still, maintain
+earnestly that it was most graceful to “sew with a long point”--that
+is, to push the needle nearly its whole length through at each stitch,
+instead of pulling it out, so to speak, by the nose. And she was right,
+as you can verify by the next sewing you take up.
+
+In the time of Madame Celnart, fine ladies used to powder their hair
+with the dust of Florentine iris, which gave their love-breathing
+tresses the violet odor of spring. A pleasant idea; but their iris, our
+orris-root, must have been a trifle fresher than comes to this country.
+It makes us sure that the beauties of Titian’s and Guido’s times were
+real women, to know that they steeped their tresses in bleaching
+liquids and dyes, and spread their locks in the sun for hours to gain
+the coveted golden tinge; and the hair of the Bella Donna herself might
+have caught part of its enchantment from the sprinkling of violet
+powder that lent its waves a soul. Those immortal beauties would have
+canonized Lubin had he been alive with his pomades and perfumes in
+their time. Celnart was a courageous advocate of cosmetics, or else
+she was wise enough to put the worst first, for one of her earliest
+recipes is this depilatory, which is not at all quoted by way of
+recommendation. It is the Oriental Rusma, a depilatory used in harems:
+
+Two ounces of quicklime, half an ounce of orpiment and red arsenic;
+boil in one pint of alkaline lye, and try with a feather to see when
+it is strong enough. Touch the parts to be rid of hair, and wash with
+cold water. When we say that orpiment and realgar are deadly poisons,
+and add Madame Celnart’s remark that the mixture is of “_une grande
+causticité_,” often attacking the tissue of the skin, our readers will
+quite agree with her that it is only to be used with “_la plus grande
+circonspection_,” or, still better, not at all. The _Crème Parisienne
+depilatoire_ is harmless, and is given for what it is worth: One eighth
+of an ounce of rye starch, and the same of sulphate of baryta (or
+heavy-spar), the juice of purslane, acacia, and milk-thistle, mixed
+with oil.
+
+The high-sounding Paste of Venus, devised by a Parisian cosmetic
+artist, who shared the mythologic fancy which prevailed years ago, was
+spread over the skin to soften and perfume it. Esther herself might
+have used it, for its conjugation of spices would delight an Oriental.
+It was made of fat, butter, honey, and aromatics--the more the better;
+but as none of our belles wish to try the anointing bodily, I spare
+them the list, and give instead the _Esprit de pyrêtre_. The pyrethrum,
+or Spanish pellitory, is an herb highly valued by cosmetic artists, and
+appears in several recipes of the French:
+
+Powdered cinnamon, one drachm; coriander, nineteen scruples; vanilla,
+the same; clove, eighteen grains; cochineal, mace, and saffron, the
+same; simple spirit of pyrethrum, one litre (about seven eighths of
+a quart). Let these ingredients digest for fifteen days, and add
+orange-flower water, half an ounce; oil of anise, eighteen drops;
+citron, ditto; oils of lavender and thyme, each nine drops; ambergris,
+three grains. Mix the ambergris with the pyrêtre, and put the two
+liquids together. Filter after two days. Use as a toilet water.
+
+No wonder French cosmetics are so highly valued, when their composition
+embraces such a variety of pleasing ingredients. Thyme, anise, and
+saffron seem homely herbs for a woman’s use, but they assisted at
+every toilet among the Greek women of old; and Rhodora wove the crocus
+(meadow-saffron) with the rose, and fennel among her jasmines, without
+a thought such as these things give us of sick-teas and home-made dyes.
+Why should herbs of such excellent renown lose the poetry that belongs
+to them? Mingled in variety with ambergris and orange flowers, they
+give body to a perfume rich enough to have satisfied Cleopatra.
+
+If this recipe is complicated, what will be said to the next,
+compounded by South American women, and fashionable in Paris not so
+very long after the time of Josephine, who may have patronized, or,
+indeed, introduced this souvenir of creole coquetry. Madame Celnart
+says of it, “Only the Tartuffes of coquetry could blame the Mexican
+pomade,” whose proportions indicate that the formula came straight from
+the perfumer’s hands, and is therefore correct. Any one who wishes to
+try it can reduce the measure to suit herself:
+
+Extract of cocoa, sixty-four ounces; oil of noisette, thirty-two
+ounces; oil of ben, thirty-two ounces; oil of vanilla, two ounces;
+white balsam of Peru, one drachm; benzoin flowers, half a drachm;
+civet, ditto; neroli, one drachm; essence of rose, one drachm; oil
+of clove flowers, one ounce; citron and bergamot waters, each half a
+pint. Steep the vanilla in the cocoa butter eight days in a hot place;
+dissolve the balsam in half a glass of alcohol, with the benzoin and
+civet, and add the spirit of clove. Mix the essence of rose and neroli
+in the oils of ben and noisette, and beat the whole forcibly together
+in a large marble or china bowl.
+
+Creole women spread this paste on their smooth skins, which the oil
+of cocoa softens and moistens, while the delightful changing odor
+is absorbed, till their forms are like living, dusky, but perfumed
+marbles. These recipes are given not so much for imitation, or
+to contribute to the lore of perfumers this side the water, as
+curiosities of national arts and feminine vanity. Where in our country
+would we find the ingredients of the celebrated _Eau de Stahl_, known
+to the Parisian chemists forty years ago? Its compound was as follows:
+
+Alcohol, nine litres; rose-water, three litres; the root of Spanish
+pellitory, five ounces; gallingale root, three ounces; tormentil, three
+ounces; balsam of Peru, three ounces; cinnamon, five drachms; rue, one
+ounce; ratania, eight ounces. Powder the whole, and put in alcohol;
+shake well, and leave to macerate six days. Pour off, and let it stand
+twenty-four hours to clear, after which add essential oil of mint, one
+and a half drachms; powdered cochineal, four drachms. Leave to infuse
+anew three days; filter through filtering-paper, and decant. Use for a
+tooth-wash, for washing the face, or for baths.
+
+Peruvian powder was a standard dentifrice of the same date. It is made
+of white sugar, half a drachm; cream of tartar, one drachm; magnesia,
+ditto; cinnamon, six grains; mace, two grains; sulphate of quinine,
+three grains; carmine, five grains. Powder and mix carefully, adding
+four drops of the oils of rose and mint.
+
+The following cosmetic, called the _Serkis du Sérail_, is said to be
+a favorite lotion used by the Sultanas, for whom it is imported from
+Achaia--though this sounds more like one of those pleasant fictions
+which perfumers delight to invent concerning their oils and pomades
+than any thing we are obliged to believe. This may be said in favor of
+the assertion--it is such a mixture of starch and oils as no one but an
+odalisque could endure to use. It is made of sweet-almond paste, ten
+livres; rye and potato starch, each six livres; oil of jasmine, eight
+ounces; the same of oil of orange flowers and of roses; black balsam of
+Peru, six ounces; essence of rose and of cinnamon, each sixty grains.
+Mix the powders and essences separately in earthen vessels, then add
+the powder to the liquid little by little, bruise well together, and
+strain through muslin.
+
+An elegant preparation for whitening the face and neck is made of
+terebinth of Mecca, three grains; oil of sweet almonds, four ounces;
+spermaceti, two drachms; flour of zinc, one drachm; white wax, two
+drachms; rose-water, six drachms. Mix in a water-bath, and melt
+together. The harmless mineral white is fixed in the pomade, or what
+we would call cold cream, and is applied with the greatest ease and
+effect. It must be to some preparation of this subtle sort that the
+lustrous whiteness of certain much-admired fashionable complexions is
+due. It is a cheap enamel, without the supposed necessity of _baking_,
+which, by the way, is such a blunder that I wonder people of sense
+persist in speaking of it as if it could be a fact.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ The Last of the Rose.--Weighing in the Balances.--To Love and
+   to be Loved.--The Enigma of Love.--Its Power over the Lot of
+   Men.--Inspiration in the Looks.--The Land of Spring.--The
+   Duchess of Devonshire.--Women at and after Thirty.--Training of
+   Emotion.--Warming the Voice.--Crow’s-feet at the Opera.--Bohemian
+   Arsenic Waters.--Recipe from Madame Vestris.--Milk of
+   Roses.--Sweet-oils.--Opera-dancers’ Prescription for Restoring
+   Suppleness.
+
+
+For any woman, maid or matron, past youth, who hears the leaves begin
+to drop, and sees the roses curl in the warm summer of her life, this
+chapter is written. It is well that with the decay of bloom and outward
+charm there should be a lessening of feeling, an amiable indifference
+to the homage that youth covets eagerly. The woman of--who dares fill
+in the age?--the woman who finds the faint lines on her cheek and the
+pallor creeping to her lip should have learned and tasted many things
+in her life--so many that she can appraise the value of all, and resign
+them contentedly, with a little sigh, not for what they were, but for
+what they were not.
+
+She should have loved, and, if possible, have won love in return,
+though that is less matter. The wisdom, the blessedness, come through
+loving, not through being loved.
+
+It is well if she can accept the complement of her affection, and find
+out of what mutable elements it is made: its fervor and forgetfulness;
+its devotion, often eclipsed and as often surprising with its fresh
+strength--weak where we trust it most, and standing proof where we
+surely expect it to fail.
+
+Such is the love of man. It is a riddle, whose learning has cost gray
+hairs on tender temples, the roses from many cheeks.
+
+It is the tradition that love makes or mars a woman’s life; but I
+have yet to learn that it does not exert an equal though silent power
+over the lot of men. Be that as it may, a woman in love is far more
+beautiful than one out of it. And this is true if the love last to
+threescore.
+
+Let women, if they would remain charming, by all means keep their hold
+on love, their faith in romance. The power of feeling gives vitality
+and interest to faces long after their first flush has passed. Speaking
+as matter of fact, this is the case, for emotion has a livelier power
+than the sun has over the blood, and the miracle of love in making a
+plain girl pretty is explained by the stimulating effects of happiness
+on the circulation. If you would preserve inspiration in your looks,
+beware how you repress emotion. Cultivate, not the signs of it, but
+emotion itself, for the two things are very distinct. Suffer yourself
+to be touched and swayed by noble music and passion. To do this, place
+yourself often under the best influences within reach. There may be
+pathos enough in the rendering of a poor little girl’s song at the
+piano to stir tenderly chords of feeling that were growing dull for
+want of use. The rose of morning, the perfume of spring, have rapt
+many a middle-aged woman away to divine regions of fancy, from which
+she came back with their dewy freshness and smell lingering about her.
+Youth has its daylong reveries while its hands are at work. We older
+ones need to reserve with jealous care our hours of solitude, in which
+the springs fill up.
+
+The faces of old beauties have no charm beyond that of feeling. Look at
+the women who were reputed the belles of our large cities twenty years
+ago. They may be well preserved; but in most cases they are mere masks
+in discolored wax. The pearly teeth, the small Grecian features, the
+soft, fine hair and regular eyes are left, but the brow has learned
+neither to weep nor smile, the lips are composed, and might be mute
+for all the expression that replaces their lost crimson. One could
+adore the wasted beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire, “worn by the
+agitations of a brilliant and romantic life,” for the sake of the
+fire and kindness that lit even its death-pillow; and the Josephine
+of Malmaison, with eyes always eloquent of tears, wins more devotion
+than the empress at Saint Cloud, confessed the loveliest woman of
+France. Let no woman fall into the mistake of preserving her beauty by
+refraining from emotion, for all she can keep by such costly pains will
+be the coffin-like shapeliness of flowers preserved in sand.
+
+Laugh, weep, rejoice, or suffer as life provides. Only feel something
+natural, worthy and vivid enough not to leave your face a blank.
+
+There is a time between twenty-five and thirty-five when the struggle
+of life, mean or lofty as it may be, oppresses women sorely. Fret
+and care write crossing script on their faces, which grow yellow and
+pinched till they despair of comeliness. This is when they are learning
+to live. Ten years or so make the lesson easy, and it is one of the
+thankfulest things in the world to see such faces going back to the
+blossom and sunny sweetness of their spring. Many a woman is handsomer
+at thirty-nine than she was at thirty. Nature responds wonderfully to
+the reliefs afforded her. The only counsel is to let Nature go free. Do
+not think, because trial has bent spirit and frame together, that they
+should stay so a moment after the heavy hand is off. If you feel like
+singing, sing, not humming low, but joyful and clear as the larks, that
+would carol just as gayly at ninety, if larks lived so long, as the
+first summer they left their nests. The worst of English and American
+systems of manners is the constant repression they demand. It impairs
+even the physical powers, so that in training a singer the first thing
+great artists do is to teach her to feel, in order, as they say, to
+“warm up” the voice and give it fullness. Women need to cultivate
+pleasure and amusement far more after they are thirty than before it,
+I mean romantic pleasures, such as come from exquisite colors and
+sceneries in nature or their homes, from poetry and the loveliest
+music. They are twice as impressible then as they are in youth, if
+they know how to get hold of the right notes. They leave themselves to
+fall out of tune, and forget to respond.
+
+Yet, as a woman does not love to carry her thinned tresses and
+crow’s-feet into the glare of the opera, or to talk poetry when
+rheumatism twinges her middle finger, the craft of the toilet comes
+in most gratefully. The freshness of the skin is prolonged by a
+simple secret, the tepid bath in which bran is stirred, followed by
+long friction, till the flesh fairly shines. This keeps the blood at
+the surface, and has its effect in warding off wrinkles. Bohemian
+countesses over thirty may go to arsenic springs, as they were wont to
+do, for the benefit of their complexions; but the home bath-room is
+more efficacious than even the minute doses of quicksilver with which
+the ladies of George the First’s court used to poison themselves--a
+primitive way of getting at the virtues of blue-pill.
+
+The celebrated Madame Vestris slept with her face covered by a paste
+which gave firmness to a loose skin and prevented wrinkles. It was a
+recipe which the Spanish ladies are fond of using, which requires the
+whites of four eggs boiled in rose-water, to which is added half an
+ounce of alum, and as much oil of sweet almonds, the whole beaten to a
+paste.
+
+A favorite cosmetic of the time of Charles II. was the milk of roses,
+said to give a fair and youthful appearance to faded cheeks. It was
+made by boiling gum-benzoin in the spirits of wine till it formed
+a rich tincture, fifteen drops of which in a glass of water made a
+fragrant milk, in which the face and arms were bathed, leaving the
+lotion to dry on. It obliterates wrinkles as far as any thing can
+besides enamel.
+
+To restore suppleness to the joints, the Oriental practice may be
+revived of anointing the body with oil. The best sweet-oil or oil of
+almonds is used for this purpose, slightly perfumed with attar of roses
+or oil of violets. The joints of the knees, shoulders, and fingers are
+to be oiled daily, and the ointment well rubbed into the skin, till it
+leaves no gloss. The muscles of the back feel a sensible relief from
+this treatment, especially when strained with work or with carrying
+children. The anointing should follow the bath, when the two are taken
+together. It is a pity this custom has ever fallen into disuse among
+our people, who need it quite as much as the sensuous Orientals.
+
+Opera-dancers in Europe use an ointment which is thus given by Lola
+Montez: The fat of deer or stag, eight ounces; olive-oil, six ounces;
+virgin wax, three ounces; white brandy, half a pint; musk, one grain;
+rose-water, four ounces. The fat, oil, and wax are melted together,
+and the rose-water stirred into the brandy, after which all are beaten
+together. It is used to give suppleness to the limbs in dancing, and
+relieves the stiffness ensuing on violent exercise. Ambergris would
+suit modern taste better than musk in preparing this.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ The Fearful Malady of which no one Dies.--_Esprit Odontalgique._--Gray
+   Pastilles.--Important to Smokers.--Mouth Perfumes.--Care of the
+   Breath.--Directions for Bathing.--Perfumes for the Bath.--Bazin’s
+   _Pâte_.--Quality of Soaps.--Bathing and Anointing the Feet.--Nicety
+   of Stockings.--Delicate Shoe Linings.--Feet of Pauline Bonaparte.
+
+
+Among the recipes, more or less valuable, which come to light in old
+collections, one for the toothache, by Boerhaave, is too useful to be
+lost. Even beauties have the toothache sometimes, especially after
+going home from the Academy of Music on a snowy night with a tulle
+scarf folded about their heads, or after sitting with their backs to
+the window in a half-warmed parlor during a ceremonious call. Use
+before beauty, mademoiselles; and with no more excuse is proffered
+the _Esprit Odontalgique_, which should be kept in the dressing-room,
+ready for the slightest signs of that most terrible malady, from which
+nobody dies.
+
+Alcohol of thirty-three degrees, one ounce; camphor, four grains; opium
+in powder, twenty grains; oil of cloves, eighty drops. The efficacy of
+this lotion will be seen at a glance, and no other authority for its
+use is needed than that of the learned and excellent physician who gave
+it its name.
+
+Very properly follow the gray pastilles for purifying the breath.
+They do so, not by disguising it, but by reaching the root of the
+difficulty, arresting decay in the teeth, and neutralizing acidity
+of the stomach. The mixture is very simple: Chlorate of lime, seven
+drachms; vanilla sugar, three drachms; gum-arabic, five drachms--to be
+mixed with warm water to a stiff paste, rolled, and cut into lozenges.
+
+Madame Celnart archly advises all good wives to let their spouses
+know that these lozenges entirely remove the traces of tobacco in the
+breath. As a good wife will hardly interfere with a favorite habit of
+her husband who is fond of smoking, the least any gentleman can do is
+to render his presence acceptable after the indulgence.
+
+Another pastille, preferable on some accounts to the above, but owing
+its value to the same principle, is made from chlorate of sodium,
+twenty-four grains; powdered sugar, one ounce; gum-adraganth, twenty
+grains; perfumer’s essential oil, two drachms. Powder the chlorate in
+a glass mortar; put the powder in a cup, and pour in a little water;
+let it settle, and pour off. Repeat the process three times with fresh
+water, filtering what is poured off each time, and mix the gum and
+sugar with it, adding the perfume last.
+
+A gargle for the mouth which combines all the virtues of _Eau
+Angelique_, and every other wash of heavenly name, is made of the
+chlorate of lime in powder, three drachms; distilled water, two ounces.
+Reduce the chlorate with a glass pestle in a glass mortar, add a
+third of the water, stir, and pour off, as directed before, till all
+is added. To this add two ounces of alcohol, in which is dissolved
+four drops of the volatile oil of roses and four drops of perfumer’s
+essential oil. Half a teaspoonful of the solution in a wine-glass of
+water is to be used at a time as a tooth-wash and gargle for the mouth
+and gums.
+
+With the best intentions as to physical neatness, many persons are
+unable to make the impression of their company wholly agreeable. They
+may remember with advantage that rinsing the mouth with this fluid
+six times a day is not too much pains in order to make themselves
+acceptable to others. There is no surer passport to esteem than an
+innocent, taintless person, which wins upon one before moral virtues
+have time to make their way. If you think this truth is repeated too
+often, study the impression made by the respectable people you meet for
+the next month. The result will satisfy you that those who are as neat
+as white cats are as one to fifteen of the careless, easily satisfied
+sort.
+
+Slight disorders of the system make themselves known by the sickly
+odor of the perspiration, quite sensible to others, though the person
+most interested is the last to become conscious of it. The least care,
+even in cold weather, for those who would make their physical as sure
+as their moral purity, is to bathe with hot water and soap twice a
+week from head to foot. Carbolic toilet soap is the best for common
+use, as it heals and removes all roughness and “breakings out” not
+of the gravest sort. Ladies whose rough complexions were a continual
+mortification have found them entirely cleared by the use of this soap.
+The slight unpleasant odor of the acid present soon disappears after
+washing, and it may be overcome by using a few spoonfuls of perfume in
+the water.
+
+An excellent preparation for bathing is Bacheville’s _Eau des
+Odalisques_. The French recommend it highly for frictions, lotions, and
+baths. It is made in quantity for free use after this recipe: Two pints
+of alcohol, one of rose-water, half a drachm of Mexican cochineal,
+four ounces of soluble cream of tartar, five drachms of liquid balsam
+of Peru, five drachms of dry balsam of the same; vanilla, one drachm;
+pellitory root, one and a half ounces; storax, one and a half ounces;
+galanga, one ounce; root of galanga, one and a half ounces; dried
+orange peel, two drachms; cinnamon, essence of mint, root of Bohemian
+angelica, and dill seed, each one drachm. Infuse eight days, and
+filter. For lotions, add one spoonful of this to six of water. It is
+also useful for freshening the mouth, adding twenty-four drops of it to
+four teaspoonfuls of tepid water. For diseased gums, double the dose,
+and gargle with it several times a day.
+
+The _Pâte Axérasive_ of Bazin, the celebrated perfumer, has the
+distinction of being highly commended by the French Royal Academy of
+Medicine. It is better for toilet use than soaps which contain so
+much alkali. Take powder of bitter almonds, eight ounces; oil of the
+same, twelve ounces; _savon vert_ of the perfumers, eight ounces;
+spermaceti, four ounces; soap powder, four ounces; cinnabar, two
+drachms; essence of rose, one drachm. Melt the soap and spermaceti with
+the oil in a water-bath, add the powder, and mix the whole in a marble
+mortar. It forms a kind of paste, which softens and whitens the skin
+better than any soap known.
+
+Make toilet waters and pastes of this kind in quantity, as they improve
+with age. It costs about one fourth as much to prepare them as to
+buy the same quantity at the perfumer’s, and one has the advantage
+of a finer article. Do not use cheap soap for the toilet. Such is
+almost always made of rancid or half-putrid fat, combined with strong
+alkalies, which dry and crack the skin, sometimes causing dangerous
+sores by the poisonous matter they introduce from vile grease. _Never_
+allow such soap to touch the flesh of an infant. To do so is little
+better than absolute cruelty. White soaps are the safest, as they are
+only made of purified fat.
+
+The feet should be washed every night and morning as regularly as the
+hands. It preserves their strength and elasticity, and helps to keep
+their shape. What person of refinement can take any pleasure in looking
+at her own feet presenting the common appearance of distortion by shoes
+_too tight in the wrong place_, and the dry, hardened skin of partial
+neglect? One’s foot is as proper an object of pride and complacency
+as a shapely hand. But where in a thousand would a sculptor find one
+that was a pleasure to contemplate, like that of the Princess Pauline
+Bonaparte, whose lovely foot was modeled in marble for the delight of
+all the world who have seen it?
+
+As nice care should be given to feet as to hands, beginning with a bath
+of fifteen minutes in hot soap and water, followed by scraping with
+an ivory knife, and rubbing with a ball of sand-stone, which will be
+found most useful for a dozen toilet purposes. The nails may be left to
+take care of themselves, with constant bathing and well-fitting shoes,
+unless they have begun to grow into the flesh, when all to be done is
+to scrape a groove lengthwise in each corner of the nail. The whole
+foot should be anointed with purified olive-oil or oil of sweet almonds
+after such a bath. A pair of stockings should be drawn on at night to
+preserve the bedclothes from grease-spots. The oil will soak off the
+old skin, and wear away the scaly tissue about the nails, while it
+renders the soles as soft and pliant as those of a young child.
+
+A daily change of stockings is as desirable for those who walk out as
+a fresh handkerchief every morning--but how many people consider it
+necessary? It may sound audacious to suggest that when laundry-work
+is an item, a lady would show her ingrain refinement by washing her
+own Balbriggan hose as truly as by stinting herself to two pair a
+week on account of washer-women’s bills. As for the vulgarity of
+wearing colored stockings “because they show dirt less,” it is to be
+repudiated, save in the case of children, who are quite capable of
+going through with a box of white stockings in a day, and looking none
+the cleaner for it at the end. Our bootmakers are in fault about the
+lining of shoes, which ought to be changeable when soiled. Soiled,
+indeed! When are common shoes ever clean within? Our manufacturers are
+the opposite of the French, whose workmen wear fresh linen aprons, and
+wash their hands every hour, for fear of soiling the white kid linings
+at which they sew. The time will come when we will find it as shocking
+to our ideas to wear out a pair of boots without putting in new lining
+as we think the habits of George the First’s time, when maids of honor
+went without washing their faces for a week, and people wore out their
+linen without the aid of a laundress. Cleanliness means health in every
+case, and a plea must be offered for those neglected members, that only
+find favor in our eyes by making themselves as diminutive as possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+ “The Leaves are Full of Joy.”--Nobility of the Body.--Its
+   Possibilities.--Brain and Heart Dependent on it.--Physical Culture
+   Imperative in America.--Our Contempt of Health.--Easier to be
+   Magnificent than Clean.--Distilled Water for Every Use.--Substitute
+   for Stills.--Vapor and Sulphur Baths.--Bran Baths.--Oatmeal for the
+   Hands.--Frequency of Baths.--Remedies for Hepatic Spots.
+
+
+How lusty and delicate the young leaves grow on their stems in their
+nook of sunshine! What could be lovelier in its way than the three
+geranium leaves starting from the mould in the window-box where the sun
+strikes across the corner of the sill? They are so firmly poised, yet
+glancing; each full of green juice that the sun turns to jewel-light,
+with spots of darker tint where the feathered edges overlie--a subtle
+piece of color wrought by sun and soil for no eye to see but by chance,
+yet ecstatic in its delight, as if meant for the centre trefoil of an
+altar window. So the sun does all his work. So leaves grow by myriads
+in the garden and the forest. So the forces of nature bring forth every
+thing perfect if left free to their impulses.
+
+There is something like the leaves in our frames, that would grow
+springy and strong, soft-colored and brilliant, upright and joyous, if
+it were suffered to. It appeals for sunshine and gayety, for abundant
+food and ease, for copious watering, tendance, and freedom. Give it
+these, and the body, under present conditions, is as far beyond its
+common dullness and weakness as it is below the saints in light; for
+heavenly bodies can not be very different from ours unless they cease
+to be bodies.
+
+The mortal frame is noble enough as it is. No harp ever vibrates like
+it with emotion and pleasure; no star shines so fair or so wise as the
+face of man. God made it, and God loves it, which is the reason it wins
+so closely upon us, and is so dear. There is no wisdom in despising
+the body or its sensations. It is crudity to uphold that the mental
+part of us should absorb all the rest. Brain and heart are dependent on
+the body, and it was meant, not for the slave--as men seem never weary
+of preaching--but for the interpreter and companion of both.
+
+Honor is due the body, and thanks for its pleasures, which should
+be enjoyed with intelligence and leisure. They are no more low or
+debasing than mental pursuits may be when pursued to the exclusion
+of all others. The sensualist is no more intolerable in the order of
+nature than the pedant or pretender in literature, and does little
+more harm in the long-run. The former ruins himself; the latter, by a
+false philosophy, may lead thousands astray. Give the body its due--its
+thirds with the mind and the soul. Neither is the better for having
+more than its share.
+
+The need of physical culture grows more and more urgent in this
+country. Here most unlike races mix sullen and mercurial blood
+together in the most variable of climates. They interchange habits as
+well, though the only one peculiar to Americans as such is a tolerable
+contempt for the conditions of health--a contempt inherited through
+half a dozen generations. The climate is not in fault, but the people
+are. It is much easier in this country to be magnificent than to be
+clean. At any hotel there is enough of useless upholstery, as a matter
+of course, but a bath is an extra, often not to be had on any terms.
+This is the case even in the metropolis, where at least a better idea
+of civilization ought to prevail. For the rest, there is not much to be
+said for the intelligent culture of any family who have carpets before
+their bath-room is fitted up.
+
+When refinement has reached a step beyond faucets and water-pipes,
+each house will have its distilling apparatus to provide the purest
+water for drinking and bathing. Nobody will any more think of drinking
+undistilled water than they do now of eating brown sugar when they can
+get white. Her Majesty the Queen of England uses nothing but distilled
+water for her toilet, and the luxury and softness of such a bath are
+so great that no one used to its indulgence will consent to forego it.
+A small still costs five dollars, and would provide all the water that
+is needed for family use. It should be kept in action all the time, and
+fill a close reservoir for bathing, while that for cooking and drinking
+should be freshly distilled each day. A simple substitute for a still
+is a tea-kettle, with a close cover and a gutta-percha or lead pipe
+fastened to the spout, leading through a pail of cold water into a jar
+for holding the distilled water. The steam from the boiling water goes
+off through the tube, condenses under the cold water, and runs off pure
+into the receiver. Where houses are heated by steam, I am told, they
+may be amply provided with distilled water by adding a pipe to one of
+the tubular heaters, that will carry steam into a cooler, from which
+pure water may run day and night.
+
+Besides the distilled-water baths in a complete household, there should
+be facilities for the vapor-bath at any time. This is invaluable in
+colds, rheumatism, congestions, and neuralgia. The readiest substitute
+is the rush-bottomed chair and lighted saucer of alcohol described in
+a former chapter. A sulphur bath requires a shallow pan of coals with
+a tin water-pan above it, and an elevated seat over the whole. Sulphur
+is thrown on the coals, which mingles with the steam, and enters the
+system by the pores, which are opened by the vapor. The patient,
+brazier, and chair must be enveloped with a water-proof covering in the
+closest manner, leaving only the head exposed, so that no sulphurous
+vapor can possibly be breathed, as that would be suffocation at once.
+In regular bathing establishments the patient sits in a wooden box,
+having a cover and a water-proof collar which fits tight about the
+neck, leaving the head out. This box is filled with steam by a pipe,
+and the vapor impregnated with sulphur from a spoonful burning in one
+corner of the box, or from a generator outside with connecting tube. It
+is difficult, if not impossible, to administer a sulphur bath without
+proper and special appliances.
+
+The bran bath, recommended before, is taken with a peck of common bran,
+such as is used to stuff pincushions, stirred into a tub of warm water.
+The rubbing of the scaly particles of the bran cleanses the skin, while
+the gluten in it softens and strengthens the tissues. Oatmeal is even
+better, as it contains a small amount of oil that is good for the skin.
+For susceptible persons, the tepid bran bath is better than a cold
+shower-bath. The friction of the loose bran calls the circulation to
+the surface. In France the bran is tied in a bag for the bath, but this
+gives only the benefit of the gluten, not that of the irritation.
+
+The frequency of the bath should be determined, after it has been taken
+for a week or two, by feeling. Take the refreshment as often as the
+system desires it. The harm is done not so much by bathing often as by
+staying in the water long at a time. A hot soap-suds bath once a week
+is beneficial to persons with moist and oily skins. Bay-rum and camphor
+may be used to advantage by such persons each time after washing the
+face. The hot suds bath should be taken thrice a week by those who wish
+to remove moth patches.
+
+One of the best ways to make the hands soft and white is to wear at
+night large mittens of cloth filled with wet bran or oatmeal, and tied
+closely at the wrist. A lady who had the finest, softest hands in the
+county confessed that she had a great deal of house-work to do, but
+kept them white by wearing bran mittens every night.
+
+Pastes and poultices for the face owe most of their efficacy to the
+moisture, which dissolves the old coarse skin, and the protection
+they afford from the air, which allows the new skin to form tender
+and delicate. Oat meal paste is efficacious as any thing, though
+less agreeable than the pastes made with white of egg, alum, and
+rose-water. The alum astringes the flesh, making it firm, while the egg
+keeps it sufficiently soft, and the rose-water perfumes the mixture.
+
+What are called indiscriminately moth, mask, morphew, and, by
+physicians, hepatic spots, are the sign of deep-seated disease of the
+liver. Taraxacum, the extract of dandelion root, is the standing remedy
+for this, and the usual prescription is a large pill four nights in
+a week, sometimes for months. To this may be added the free use of
+tomatoes, figs, mustard-seed, and all seedy fruits and vegetables, with
+light broiled meats, and no bread but that of coarse flour. Pastry,
+puddings of most sorts, and fried food of all kinds must be dispensed
+with by persons having a tendency to this disease. It may take six
+weeks, or even months, to make any visible impression on either the
+health or the moth patches, but success will come at last. One third
+of a teaspoonful of chlorate of soda in a wine-glass of water, taken
+in three doses, before meals, will aid the recovery by neutralizing
+morbid matters in the stomach. There is no sure cosmetic that will
+reach the moth patches. Such treatment as described, such exercise as
+is tempting in itself, and gay society, will restore one to conditions
+of health in which the extinction of these blotches is certain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ The Banting System.--A Quaint Author.--Trials of Corpulency.--Result
+   of Living on Sixpence a Day.--Indifference of Doctors.--A Wise
+   Surgeon.--Relation of Glucose to Obesity.--Diet for Stout People.--No
+   Starch, no Sugar.--Losing Flesh at the Rate of a Pound a
+   Week.--“Human Beans.”--Humors of Banting’s Tract.--His
+   Gratitude.--Honors to Dr. Harvey.--One Day with Dives, the Next with
+   Lazarus.--Bromide of Ammonia.
+
+
+Request is often made for the details of Mr. Banting’s system of
+reducing flesh. The popular idea of the writer, whose modest pamphlet
+has linked his name with the system he observed, is very like the
+caricature of the dry modern savant. The severe scientist who keeps his
+child for years without fire or clothes to demonstrate the superiority
+of human beings to cold, or who throws a new-born baby into a tub
+of water to prove that the race can swim by nature, should not be
+mentioned on the same page with the kindly enthusiast of the letter on
+corpulency.
+
+There is no evidence in its pages that the writer ever tried authorship
+before. He was over sixty-six years old, when, in a burst of gratitude
+for his relief from the burden of too much flesh, he took up his pen
+to tell his fellow-creatures of help for those who suffer a like
+infliction. The quaintness of his pages reminds one of Izaak Walton,
+from his opening sentences, where he declares, “Of all the parasites
+that affect humanity, I do not know of, nor can I imagine, any more
+distressing than that of obesity”--an opinion with which all his
+fellow-sufferers will agree. He is fond of terming his grievance a
+parasite, and the name slips out with a frequency which is like the
+echo of objurgations hurled at his infirmity. Being called to account
+for it later, he meekly declares that the word is used wholly in a
+figurative sense. His state might have justified a stronger epithet.
+No parents on either side, to use his own phrase, ever showed a
+tendency to corpulency, but between thirty and forty he found the
+habit growing upon him. His physician advised violent exercise, and
+he took to rowing. Finding his flesh increase, he consulted “high
+orthodox authority (never any inferior adviser), tried sea air and
+bathing, took gallons of physic and liquor potassæ, always by advice,
+rode horseback, drank the waters of Leamington, Cheltenham, and
+Harrowgate”--doses enough, we should think, to have disgusted him with
+life forever--“lived on sixpence a day, and earned it, at least by hard
+labor, and used vapor-baths and shampooing,” without any help for his
+infirmity.
+
+The rich gentleman found his position, the good things of this life,
+his houses, horses, and friends, small enjoyment, save as they
+lessened the increasing burden life heaped upon him. He was obedient
+and intelligent in using every means of relief suggested, but his
+doctors were of very small use to him. As he pathetically says, “When
+a corpulent man eats, drinks, and sleeps well, has no pain and no
+organic disease, the judgment of able men seems paralyzed.” His state
+was pitiable, and there are too many companions in distress who answer
+to the same picture. He could not tie his shoe, and often had to go
+down stairs slowly backward, to save the jar of increased weight on his
+ankles and knee-joints. Low living was prescribed, and he followed it
+so heartily that he brought his system into a low, irritable state, and
+broke out in boils and large carbuncles, for which he had to be treated
+and “toned up” in a way that brought him into heavier condition than
+ever.
+
+He speaks feelingly, yet with simple dignity, of the trials which stout
+people endure, being crowded in cars and stages, uncomfortable in warm
+theatres and lecture-rooms, besides finding themselves the butt of
+ridicule, or, at least, the object of remark. The last caused him for
+many years to give up public pleasures. Many persons, as they read,
+will have cause to reproach themselves, for those who are considerate
+of every other species of human infirmity fail to recognize the real
+suffering of those who carry a load of flesh. A sensitive person
+encumbered with adipose feels keenly the glances, if not the smiles,
+which follow his entrance into a public vehicle. It is a test of
+delicacy for others to appear unconscious of his infirmity.
+
+When Turkish baths came into fashion, Mr. Banting tried them, with the
+result of six pounds’ loss after taking fifty baths, which was not
+encouraging, though they have been of service in other like instances.
+In August, 1862, his case stood thus: He was nearly sixty-six years
+old, five feet five inches high, and weighed over two hundred pounds.
+He went to no excess in eating or drinking, his diet being chiefly
+bread, beer, milk, vegetables, and pastry. Flesh impeded his breathing,
+his eye-sight failed, and he lost his hearing, yet most of the doctors
+he went to for relief considered his trouble of no account, as one of
+the accompaniments of age, like wrinkles and gray hairs. The faculty
+are to blame for overlooking such a foe to human comfort.
+
+Mr. William Harvey, Surgeon of the Royal Dispensary for Diseases of the
+Ear, was the first person wise and considerate enough to prescribe a
+remedy. He reasoned from M. Bernard’s accepted theory of the product of
+glucose as well as bile from the liver. Glucose is allied to starch and
+saccharine matter, and is produced in the liver by ingestion of sugar
+and starch. The substance is always present in excess both in diabetes
+and obesity, and it struck this eminent surgeon that the same dry diet
+which drains the excess of glucose in the former disease might be of
+service in the latter. Abstinence from food containing starch and sugar
+reduces diabetes, and accordingly he prescribed it for his patient. He
+was to leave off all bread, milk, butter, beer, sugar, and potatoes,
+besides other root vegetables, as these contain the largest amount of
+fat material.
+
+Yet the diet allowed was liberal. Breakfast was four or five ounces of
+beef, mutton, kidney, broiled fish, and any cold meat except veal and
+pork; a large cup of tea without milk or sugar, a little biscuit--_i.
+e._, crackers--or an ounce of dry toast.
+
+Dinner: five or six ounces of any fish except salmon, herring, and
+eels, which are too fat; any vegetables but potatoes, beets, parsnips,
+carrots, or turnips, green vegetables being especially good; an ounce
+of dry toast; the fruit of a pudding; any poultry or game; two or three
+glasses of good claret, sherry, or Madeira, but no champagne, port, or
+beer.
+
+Tea: two or three ounces of fruit, a rusk or two, and a cup of tea
+without milk or sugar. Supper, at nine: three or four ounces of meat
+or fish, and a glass of claret. Before going to bed, if desired, a
+nightcap of grog without sugar was allowed, or a glass of claret or
+sherry.
+
+This was comfortable compared to his former diet, which was bread and
+milk for breakfast, or a pint of tea, with plenty of milk and sugar,
+and buttered toast; dinner of meat, beer, bread, of which he ate a
+great deal, and pastry, of which he was fond, with fruit tart and bread
+and meat for supper. Yet on the liberal diet his flesh went down at the
+rate of more than a pound a week for thirty-five weeks.
+
+He explains his belief that certain food is as bad for elderly people
+as beans are for horses, and thenceforth he calls the forbidden food
+“human beans.” He suffers himself to make a little mirth over the
+enemy that held him in durance so long. We can well believe he would
+“scrupulously avoid those _beans_, such as milk, beer, sugar, and
+potatoes,” after he had groaned a score of years from “that dreadful
+tormenting parasite on health and comfort.” He sensibly writes his
+opinion that “corpulence must naturally press with undue violence upon
+the bodily viscera, driving one part on another, and stopping the
+free action of all.” He calls Mr. Harvey’s system “the tram-road for
+obesity,” and says, “The great charm and comfort of this system is that
+its effects are palpable within one week of trial.”
+
+He protests that he found not the slightest inconvenience in the
+probational remedy, which reduced his girth twelve inches and his
+weight thirty-eight pounds in thirty-five weeks. He could go up and
+down stairs naturally, and perform every necessary office for himself
+without the slightest trouble; his sight was restored, and his hearing
+unimpaired. In token of his gratitude, he gave the doctor, besides his
+fees, the sum of £50, to be distributed among the hospital patients. To
+prove the reality of his dedication of his letter “to the public simply
+and entirely from an earnest desire to benefit his fellow-creatures,”
+the editions were distributed gratuitously in hopes of reaching his
+fellow-sufferers from flesh. He was eager that they should find the
+relief which to him was rapturous. It must have reached some cases, for
+more than 58,000 copies had been issued at the date of this edition.
+The author was urged to sell his work, even if the proceeds were
+given to the poor; but with the sensitiveness of a man not used to
+appear in public, he says, “On reflection, I feared my motives might be
+mistaken.” In giving the credit of this system to Dr. Harvey, we are
+sure of obeying the wishes of the author, who speaks of his benefactor
+with extreme gratitude, and says, “He has since been told it is a
+remedy as old as the hills, but the application is of recent date.” He
+thinks any one who suffers from obesity may “prudently mount guard over
+the enemy, if he is not a fool to himself.” He was so far delivered
+from his malady as to indulge in the forbidden articles of food; but
+says, “I have to keep careful watch, so that if I choose to spend a day
+or two with Dives, I must not forget to devote the next to Lazarus.”
+
+No medicine was given with this diet save a volatile alkali draught in
+the morning during the first month. This was probably the bromide of
+ammonia, which is of great use in reducing an over-amount of flesh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ A Letter.--Trials of a Plain Woman.--The Best Husband in the
+   World.--Burdock Wash for the Hair.--For Children’s Hair.--Oil of Mace
+   as a Stimulant.--To Restore Color to the Hair.--Sperm-oil a Powerful
+   Hair Restorer.--The Cheapest Hair-Dye.--Cure for Chilblains.--Loose
+   Shoes the Cause of Corns.--Pyroligneous Acid for Corns.--Turpentine
+   and Carbolic Acid for Soft Corns.
+
+
+Among inquiries not seldom repeated is an urgent demand for a
+prescription to keep the hair from coming out. The following letter
+will be acceptable to many readers.
+
+ “I was emphatically one of the ‘ugly girls,’ being of a very large
+ figure, and inheriting thin hair; otherwise I suited myself well
+ enough. But oh! the agonies I have suffered through my personal
+ deficiencies. Now, with a happy home of my own and the best husband in
+ the world, I can smile at the old distress. Yet it was no less real,
+ and I can pity the ugly girls as nobody but one who has ‘been there’
+ can.
+
+ “My hair began coming out when I was just in my teens, and has
+ always been the trial of my life. I have been up and down the whole
+ scale of restoratives, with all manner of recipes volunteered by
+ sympathizing friends. Last fall, after returning from a two months’
+ stay near Saratoga, where I had undergone a severe course of treatment
+ for sundry physical ills, my hair came out frightfully, till I was
+ almost without any, and nothing seemed to check it. A relative, an
+ old lady, told me to use burdock-root tea. I tried it, and it worked
+ like a charm. My hair has never grown as it does now, and it has
+ absolutely ceased coming out--something that has not been the case
+ for fifteen years. Something of this may be due, as far as growth is
+ concerned, to a receipt given me by a friend a month or so ago. It
+ is a family receipt, and something of a family secret. The ladies of
+ the house, who use it, have magnificent hair, which they attribute to
+ this receipt. It is a queer conglomerate, as you see: One pound of
+ yellow-dock root, boiled in five pints of water till reduced to one
+ pint; strain, and add an ounce of pulverized borax, half an ounce of
+ coarse salt, three ounces of sweet-oil, a pint of New England rum, and
+ the juice of three large red onions, perfumed at pleasure--(a quarter
+ of an ounce of oil of lavender and ten grains of ambergris would be
+ efficacious in overcoming the powerful scent of the ingredients).
+
+ “My little girl has magnificent hair, but it troubles me by coming
+ out this winter. As she is only five years old, I have hesitated
+ about putting any thing on. I wish you would some time say if it is
+ best to doctor a child’s hair, or let nature take its course. I have
+ learned that to shampoo the head with cold water every morning is an
+ excellent thing, as is an occasional thorough washing with soap-suds,
+ not rinsing the soap out completely. I have sometimes checked the fall
+ of hair by such means. The burdock root was also used by steeping it
+ in boiling water till a strong tea was made and used as a wash two or
+ three times a day, then at longer intervals.”
+
+In answer to the query in the excellent letter above, it may be said
+that it is always well to cure where there is disease. Simple remedies
+aid nature. A child’s hair is too valuable to lose. One teaspoonful
+of ammonia to a pint of warm water makes a wash that may be used on a
+child’s head daily with safety. It does not split the hair, as soap
+will do if left to dry in.
+
+One of the most powerful stimulants and restoratives for the hair is
+the oil of mace. Those who want something to bring hair in again are
+advised to try it in preference to cantharides, which it is said to
+equal, if not to surpass, without the danger of the latter. A strong
+tincture for the hair is made by adding half an ounce of the oil of
+mace to a pint of deodorized alcohol. Pour a spoonful or two into a
+saucer; dip a small, stiff brush into it, and brush the hair smartly,
+rubbing the tincture well into the roots. On bald spots, if hair will
+start at all, it may be stimulated by friction with a piece of flannel
+till the skin looks red, and rubbing the tincture into the scalp. This
+process must be repeated three times a day for weeks. When the hair
+begins to grow, apply the tincture once a day till the growth is well
+established, bathing the head in cold water every morning, and briskly
+brushing it to bring the blood to the surface.
+
+When the hair loses color, it may be restored by bathing the head in a
+weak solution of ammonia, an even teaspoonful of carbonate of ammonia
+to a quart of water, washing the head with a crash mitten, and brushing
+the hair thoroughly while wet. Bathing the head in a strong solution
+of rock-salt is said to restore gray hair in some cases. Pour boiling
+water on rock-salt in the proportion of two heaping table-spoonfuls to
+a quart of water, and let it stand till cold before using.
+
+The old specific of bear’s grease for the hair is hardly found now,
+and one can never be sure of getting the real article; but an equally
+powerful application is discovered in pure sperm-oil, of the very
+freshest, finest quality. This forms the basis of successful hair
+restoratives, and will not fail of effect if used alone. It is,
+however, procured in proper freshness only by special importation from
+the north coast of Europe.
+
+In the list of hair-dyes, one agent has long been overlooked which is
+found in the humblest households. It is too common and humble, indeed,
+to excite confidence at first; but it is said that the water in which
+potatoes have been boiled with the skins on forms a speedy and harmless
+dye for the hair and eyebrows. The parings of potatoes before cooking
+may be boiled by themselves, and the water strained off for use. To
+apply it, the shoulders should be covered with cloths to protect the
+dress, and a fine comb dipped in the water drawn through the hair,
+wetting it at each stroke, till the head is thoroughly soaked. Let
+the hair dry thoroughly before putting it up. If the result is not
+satisfactory the first time, repeat the wetting with a sponge, taking
+care not to discolor the skin of the brow and neck. Exposing the hair
+to the sun out-of-doors will darken and set this dye. No hesitation
+need be felt about trying this, for potato-water is a safe article
+used in the household pharmacopœia in a variety of ways. It relieves
+chilblains if the feet are soaked in it while the water is hot, and is
+said to ease rheumatic gout.
+
+Inquiries have been made after a cure for corns. It is not always the
+case that they come from wearing tight shoes. I have seen troublesome
+ones produced by wearing a loose cloth shoe that rubbed the sides of
+the foot. It is best always to wear a snugly fitting shoe of light,
+soft leather, not so tight as to be painful, nor loose enough to allow
+the foot to spread. The muscles are grateful for a certain amount of
+compression, which helps them to do their work.
+
+When corns are troublesome, make a shield of buckskin leather an inch
+or two across, with a hole cut in the centre the size of the corn;
+touch the exposed spot with pyroligneous acid, which will eat it away
+in a few applications. Besides this, a strong mixture of carbolic
+acid and glycerine is good--say one half as much acid as glycerine.
+Of course, only a very small quantity will be needed, and it must be
+kept out of the way, for it is a burning poison. In default of these,
+turpentine may be used both for corns and bunions. A weaker solution of
+carbolic acid will heal soft corns between the toes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ A Talk about Complexions.--Delicate Lotion.--Cause of Rough
+   Faces.--Sun Painting and Bleaching.--Court Ladies Refusing to Wash
+   their Faces.--Experiments with Olive-tar.--Consumption and Clear
+   Faces.--Rev. W. H. H. Murray on Olive-tar.--Porcelain Women.--Drawing
+   Humors to the Surface.--What is to be Done for the Weak Women?
+
+
+A Southern lady sends the following recipe for glycerine lotion, which
+is refined and pleasant as well as useful. The pain of sunburned and
+freckled skin, so troublesome to many of our fair readers, can be
+relieved, and the shining morning face of youth restored, by this
+application: Take one ounce of sweet almonds, or of pistachio-nuts,
+half a pint of elder or rose-water, and one ounce of pure glycerine;
+grate the nuts, put the powder in a little bag of linen, and squeeze it
+for several minutes in the rose-water; then add glycerine and a little
+perfume. It may be used by wetting the face with it two or three times
+a day. This is a grateful application for a parched, rough skin. It
+should be allowed to dry thoroughly, when, if it feel sticky or pasty,
+it may be washed off with warm water.
+
+The reason why so many young women have rough faces is, they wash their
+faces every day but neglect to cleanse their bodies. The pores are
+clogged by secretions, and morbid matters in the blood break out in
+the only free spot, the face. The ladies of King George’s court were
+perfectly logical when they refused to wash their faces lest it should
+spoil their complexions. They seldom washed either bodies or linen, and
+it was dangerous to give their festering blood an outlet by clearing a
+place for it.
+
+Full-blooded girls whose complexions give them trouble should not eat
+fat meat save in the depth of winter, nor drink milk. They may take
+these in after-years, if they grow thin and weak from hard work or the
+nursing of children. Their systems can turn the grapes and pears they
+ought to feed on, the fish, chicken, and lean meat, the nutty oatmeal
+and wheat cakes (not mushes), into flesh enough to round their elbows,
+and strength enough to make their walk like the figure of a dance. They
+should try daily bathing, or rather scrubbing with soap and hot water,
+followed by a cold dip, a process taking a matter of ten minutes a day,
+at most, if they know the meaning of dispatch. Very likely they will
+need a few bottles of Saratoga water or doses of salts to clear the
+blood, adhering religiously to a Graham diet the while, or their last
+state after the medicine will be worse than the first. After taking the
+sulphur vapor-baths they must go out-of-doors, and finish bleaching
+themselves in the sun. By living in it five hours a day, they may gain
+the lovely painted marble of the English girl’s face, who reaps all day
+in the harvest field.
+
+Cosmetics sometimes play tricks with fair skins which are quite
+mysterious to the unlucky subject. This is the case with the tar
+and olive ointment named a few chapters ago. Those who find that its
+application brings out a fearful crop of pimples, and turns the skin
+yellow, should feel that the ointment has been a friend to them, in
+detecting a state of the blood that is any thing but safe. People of
+sedentary habits, who pay little attention to their health, are not
+aware how vitiated their blood may be for want of sunshine, good food,
+and exercise. Its torpid current leaves no mark of disease on the
+surface; humors concentrate in the vital organs, and finally appear in
+the form of chronic disorders. Consumption leaves the skin clear and
+brilliant, because the morbid matters which usually pass off through
+the skin are eating away the life in ulcers beneath. The tar brings
+them to the surface, and one application sometimes leaves a face in a
+sorry state. Three ladies of different families tried the recipe at the
+same time, with frightful results, for the reason that they were all
+in the state when a dose of blood purifier would have had the same
+effect. One lady kept on using the lotion, and her face became smooth
+after trying it three or four times. When people perspire freely, such
+unhappy effects are seldom noticed. Apropos of this, come a few lines
+from W. H. H. Murray, the author of the _Hand-book of the Adirondacks_.
+A lady who was puzzled by the effect of the cosmetic wrote to him about
+it, knowing he was familiar with its use in the mountains, and received
+this merry answer:
+
+ “I have had a hearty laugh over your perplexity. All I know is, the
+ mixture was common sailors’ tar and sweet-oil, with the consistency of
+ sirup. Our party, ladies and gentlemen both, have used it freely for
+ years in the woods, and the ladies have always declared that it made
+ their skin as soft as satin. Certain it is, it never caused any _rash_
+ in their case.”
+
+Delicate, fair-skinned women are the very ones on whom this cosmetic
+will have the effect of drawing humors to the surface. Heavens! how
+many of this sort there are in the world--pale, shadowy as porcelain,
+fragile of bone and tender of skin, about as useful as wish-bones of
+a Christmas chicken! They have intense souls; it is a pity they have
+not enough body to hold them. Is there not wit enough in the world to
+conjure flesh to the bones and strength to the muscles of this great
+army of weak women?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+ Sulphur Baths.--Bleaching Old Faces.--Experiments in
+   Bathing.--Cautions.--Need of Public Baths.--Their Proper
+   Prices.--Method of Giving Sulphur Vapor-baths.--Hot Baths for
+   Hot Weather.--Russian Baths at Home.--Improvements Needed in
+   Public Baths.--What they Should be.--What they Are.--The Russian
+   Vapor-bath.---After-Sensations.--Brightness and Lightness of
+   Health.--Reverence for the Physical.--Influence of Bathing on the
+   Nerves and Passions.--Necessity of Public Baths.
+
+
+It is not a little amusing to receive requests for a way to give
+sulphur vapor-baths to the face alone. Somebody wants a fair
+complexion, and fancies it may be gained by bleaching the face like
+an old Leghorn bonnet in a barrel. Aside from the certainty of being
+choked to death by this method, there is no way of whitening and
+refining the face by applications to it alone, when the conditions
+of health are not regarded in other things. Carbolic acid may heal
+pimples, and glycerine masks soften the skin; but lovely red and white,
+with lips like currants, and skin like the flesh of young cranberries,
+can not be had unless the blood is pure. For this it is indispensable
+that food should be regulated, plenty of exercise and sunshine taken,
+and all the bodily functions kept in the best order.
+
+The woman who thought she could take the sulphur vapor-bath at home in
+her own bath-room finds that her experience reads like a chapter from
+the Danbury _News_ man. A bouquet of burning matches would furnish
+the perfume inhaled in the process, and the vapor reaching her face,
+left it pale and brown in spots, as if she had moth patches. That she
+escaped with hair only partially tinged, and any eyebrows to speak of,
+is due to Nature’s guardian care, which prompted the struggle for life
+half a minute sooner than pride was inclined to give up. The fumes
+lingering about the premises have induced the gravest suspicions on
+the part of her neighbors. She is inclined to think that, if her face
+would only turn brown again all over, she would forego her dreams of
+Parian brow and cheeks like peaches.
+
+A sulphur vapor-bath is a matter of caution, when given by the best of
+hands. It is not well to take it in the damp, “breaking-up” weather of
+March, for the bath opens the pores, and catching cold with several
+grains of sulphur in one’s body is the next thing to salivation by
+mercury. The consequence is that one feels heavy and aching, the eyes
+grow weak, and teeth grumble, while latent rheumatic pains wake up
+to sharp reminder of one’s imprudence. When the weather is warm and
+settled, these baths are a luxury and medicine combined. They are most
+effectual purifiers of the system, searching out and removing all waste
+particles, to leave the skin as new and fair as a baby’s. I have seen
+old and darkened complexions restored by them in a way that was little
+short of miraculous. These baths are also of benefit in neuralgia, and
+deal powerfully with scrofulous affections.
+
+The time is not far distant when every town that owns a public hall
+will also have its public baths. Before that time comes, physicians
+ought to moderate the charges for these remedial agents. Outside of
+our large cities, the cost of taking sulphur vapor-baths is $5 each,
+and they are given only in series, as prescribed by the judgment or
+humor of the physician. When will people learn the laws and habits
+of their own bodies, so that they need not be at the mercy of every
+specialist who chooses to make money out of their emergencies? For the
+benefit of outsiders it ought to be said that the charge in the best
+establishments of New York is not higher than $2 50 for the single
+bath, and a great reduction from this is common.
+
+The essential difficulty of the sulphur vapor treatment is to keep from
+the face the powerful fumes, which are dangerous to breathe. For this
+object the bather enters a wooden box, with a cover that fits the
+neck. She takes a seat in the box undressed, and the cover is adjusted
+so that only the head is left out. Cloths or a rubber collar are
+closely drawn about the neck to prevent the least escape of gas, and a
+wet sponge is laid on the top of the head, or, what is better, a very
+wet towel folded turbanwise round the back of it, and over the top,
+thus cooling the base of the brain, the side arteries, and sensitive
+upper part. This compress must be frequently wet with cold water during
+the bath--a precaution which removes the danger of apoplectic seizures
+by the intense heating of the blood. Steam charged with sulphur is then
+let into the box by pipes, and in three minutes the perspiration flows
+as if the luckless victim were melting away. In the best establishments
+an attendant fans the bather all the time the steam is let on, to cool
+the head, into which the heated blood rushes in a way that makes the
+wet towel smoke directly. And this is an attention the patient must
+insist upon, for faintness or apoplexy may be the alternative.
+
+In the sultry and oppressive weather of summer the hot bath is of all
+others most cooling. No matter how heated the system, water as hot
+as possible is the safest and most efficient relief. One wants to
+remain in it long enough to give every part of the body a thorough
+scrubbing with soap and a mohair wash-cloth, which cleanses the skin
+more thoroughly than a brush. The hot water dissolves every particle
+of matter that clogs the pores, the rough cloth and soap remove it
+searchingly, and the towel is hardly laid aside before a delicious
+coolness and freshness passes upon one, like that of a dewy summer
+morning. The dangers resulting from a sudden check of perspiration by
+plunging into cold water when overheated, or by sitting in a draught
+to cool, are avoided, and a greater sense of coolness follows. People
+who suffer much in warm weather should reckon this a daily solace. All
+enervating effects are warded off by an instant’s plunge into cool
+water of, say, seventy degrees. I say cool, for it certainly will feel
+as if iced after a bath of nearly a hundred and fifty degrees. In a
+common bath-room, by this means, one may experience much of the real
+benefit of a Russian vapor-bath.
+
+The bath lasts fifteen minutes, when the vapor is turned off. When the
+steam in the box has had time to condense, the cover is unjointed,
+and the bather treated to a scrubbing with soap and warm water, which
+gradually cools and cleanses the body. Then cooler water is poured over
+the body, and, after wiping, one is wrapped in a fresh sheet and lies
+down to pleasant dreams.
+
+It is hard that such a necessary requisite to the highest vigor should
+rank, as it does, among luxuries. One can hardly imagine an addition
+to a fine house more desirable than a bathing-hall, such as Roman
+patricians added to their palaces, where any form of vapor or hot bath
+was at command.
+
+Many improvements are needed in our public baths. There should be small
+dressing-closets, as there are at swimming-baths, where one’s clothes
+may be kept from contact with beds on which a thousand people rest in
+the course of a year. The reposing-hall should be well lighted, and
+paved with tiles, instead of being spread with bits of carpet to be
+tossed about; and there should be ample space between the couches.
+Every thing should convey the impression of space and repose--of
+sunshine, for the sake of its reviving power, and of refinement, for
+the soothing it always brings the nerves.
+
+Usually the bath-house is built in a court-yard, where high walls on
+every side shut out the sunlight. The basement dressing-room is filled
+with narrow couches covered with light rubber sheets, suggestive of
+nothing more pleasant than cast-off clothing, and rest measured by the
+bath clock, when one’s pillow must be given up to a new-comer.
+
+From this huddled room the bather steps into one beyond summer heat,
+dark and dripping with moisture, with a plunge bath in the centre.
+Passing through it, one finds next what seems like a wide marble
+staircase running the length of each side almost to the low roof, with
+gratings let in the face of the steps. The bather ascends one of these
+stony couches, and lies down with head on the stony pillow carved every
+six feet or so for the purpose. Wrapped in a sheet, already wet with
+moisture since leaving the dressing-room, a large sponge dipped in cold
+water at the back of one’s head, and another at the mouth and nose,
+one feels as if there were perspiration enough already for sanitary
+purposes; but when, with a hiss and a roar, the steam is let on through
+the gratings, one finds the difference. Rolling vapor fills the room,
+so dense that every outline is shut out as completely as in the darkest
+night. The heat rises to suffocation, the new bather thinks, and rushes
+again and again to the douche against the wall to wet her throbbing
+head, or into the next room, which seems cool as a waterfall, for
+a gasp of air that she can breathe. Old and experienced bathers lie
+still, declaring that, with head down and the wet sponge pressed to
+the nose, they breathe without difficulty. What was perspiration is
+literally a flowing away in rills and sheets of water that drip from
+the bather’s reeking sides. One seems to have turned to jelly, and
+submits helplessly to the scrubbing-brush and final shower-bath of
+water at eighty degrees, which causes a shiver by contrast.
+
+The outer room is refreshing in its coolness, and one wraps a dry sheet
+and blanket round one and lies down on the India-rubber cloth in dreamy
+indifference to all the rest of the world.
+
+What follows is Elysium. Every ache and pain, every care, is dispelled
+in a trance of rest.
+
+All the descriptions by Eastern travelers of the luxury of the bath
+are found true in this last stage of enjoyment. One is rejuvenated,
+entranced, and sinks into a light sleep, whose approach seems a prelude
+to paradise. The eyes close to keep out the sordid surroundings of the
+bathing-room; and every idea, or rather sensation--for the brain is too
+passive to think--is bliss. This is the _dolce far niente_ Italians
+aspire to--the sum of all delight possible to sensation. Passion and
+rapture have no charms that equal it. It is the death and extinction
+of all pain. Quite as beautiful is the return to consciousness, sense
+after sense regaining double brightness as softly and steadily as the
+unfolding of a flower.
+
+After a reluctant waking and going out into the sunlight again one
+seems to have found a new self. The feather-like lightness and
+elasticity of every limb amount almost to delirium, they are so
+different from one’s usual dullness. It is freedom that feels like
+flying. If this is simply health, in our common state we must be
+farther toward extinction than we imagine.
+
+In this state of purity and light one learns to reverence one’s
+physical self. A body that at its best is so glorious and happy ought
+not to be exposed to the disturbance of appetite and the contact of
+gross things. We need to be very much more refined in our living,
+eating, and breathing. We ought to be nicer about our clothes and our
+food, choosing the best of meats, and fruit far better than we are now
+content with, and should place our dwellings out of the reach of the
+least impure air. In this altered and steadied frame evil dispositions
+lose their sway. Irritable temper is soothed, despondency flees as by
+magic, and fiercer passions lie asleep as at the stroking of their
+manes. If any one should read this page who battles with unnatural
+desires, which make life less blessed and lofty than it was meant to
+be, let her have recourse to this efficient ally. It will restore one
+from the horrible depression which craves alcohol or opium, it will
+rescue from the perilous excitement of overwrought nerves or too much
+brain-work, and banish those morbid feelings which consciously or
+unconsciously incline to impurity of imagination if not of life. The
+purity of the body and the soul are too closely interwoven for any one
+to dare neglect them.
+
+In the old time, saints used to subdue the body by prayer and fasting.
+The modern way is by prayer and bathing.
+
+It is hard enough to keep a peaceable, firm, and sweet habit of soul
+without letting loose on it the humors and insanities of the body.
+These are in no way so surely quelled as by warm baths, and this is why
+they ought to be among the public buildings of every village, and made
+as cheap as possible. There the drunkard might find a stimulus which
+has no reaction, the emotionally insane a sedative that would clear his
+brain and steady his nerves. There the exhausted watcher by the sick
+might recruit, and the overwrought student, lawyer, or physician find
+support without recourse to perilous stimulants. The doors of such a
+place in a large city should stand open night and day, like those of
+churches.
+
+Women need the bath for all these purposes even more than men. The
+feeble mother will find no soothing for her jarred nerves or lightener
+of her burdens like the well-applied bath. Strange as it sounds, the
+vapor-bath does not weaken. It washes away the worse particles of the
+body that weigh it down, and leaves it as if winged. I have known an
+invalid of years take it twice and thrice a week, gaining strength
+every time. If harm came, it is because the head was not kept cool
+by fanning, or because the final sponging was not gradual enough.
+There is harm in every remedy used unskillfully. It is the doctor’s
+province to direct in such matters, always premising that the best and
+wisest physicians prefer to teach their clients the rules of health
+and treatment for themselves, and seldom refuse to give the reason and
+theory of their orders. It is safe to be shy of the perceptions and
+methods of a doctor who doesn’t like to tell what medicines he gives,
+and why he gives them. The keenest and best medical men are impatient
+to have others see and understand the truth as well as themselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ Devices of Uneasy Age.--Bread Paste and Court-plaster to Conceal
+   Wrinkles.--Accepting the Situation.--Plain Women and Agreeable
+   Toilets.--Examples.--The Rector’s Daughter.--Dressing on Two Hundred
+   a Year.--Écru Linen and White Nansook.--A Senator’s Wife.--A
+   Washington Success.--Dull, Thin Faces.--Hay-colored Hair.--Advantages
+   of Lining Rooms with Mirrors.
+
+
+Did you ever go to see a lady, not of uncertain but of uneasy age, and
+find yourself ushered into the family sitting-room by a new servant,
+who did not know the ways of the house? Did you find her with a
+court-plaster lozenge an inch wide between her eyes, and one at the
+outer ends of her eyebrows? At sight of this remarkable ornament,
+did concern express itself lest she had fallen down stairs, or had a
+difference with the cat? Were these insinuations parried with veteran
+resources, and were you dissuaded from further inquiry by the delicate
+remark that she could interest you better than by giving the history
+of her scratches? Of course you knew there was a mystery about those
+bits of court-plaster, and perhaps feel so to this day, unless Nature
+have given you the mind of a detective. If so, your patience is to be
+rewarded. The secret of those patches was not scratches, but wrinkles.
+
+I trust due tribute will be paid to the ingenuity of failing age, which
+has perfected this device for warding off its unwelcome tokens. The
+rationale of the plan is very simple. The plaster contracts the skin,
+and prevents its sinking into creases and lines. It also protects and
+softens the skin. I have heard of one oldish lady who wears these
+ornamental appendages all the time in the house when not receiving
+company, and covers parts of her face with a dough made of well-mumbled
+bread to keep her complexion fair. The heroism of this resistance to
+time must be applauded, but it is an open question whether the play is
+worth the candle. The beauty of age lies not in freshness like that of
+sixteen, but in clear and lofty expression, in the look of experience
+and not unkindly shrewdness, in the finish of self-repression, of
+calmness, trust, and sympathy. These things grow on a face as it
+loses freshness and roundness, just as the sky begins to show through
+thinning boughs.
+
+The greatest of blessings for some people would be to learn to accept
+themselves and their gifts. If they could stand apart from themselves
+a while to see their becoming points, much of their repining would be
+dropped. Every thing and every body is beautiful in its season. There
+is a wholesome plainness that accords with domestic life and natural
+surroundings, as the bark of trees relieves their green. The color of
+health, the gentleness and sweetness that come of a conquered self,
+are elements of beauty that make any face tolerable. How dear are the
+plain faces that have watched our childhood, with whom we have grown
+up so closely that feature and form have lost their significance, so
+that we really do not know whether they are homely or not, and see
+only the love or the humor that lives in their faces. In general, very
+ugly people are happily indifferent to their looks, and degrees of
+imperfection may always be lessened by judicious use of the arts of
+dress.
+
+A young and homely woman makes herself agreeable by the complete
+neatness of a very simple toilet. Let her eschew dresses of two colors,
+or of two shades even, though the latter are allowable, if the shadings
+are very soft. When the complexion is dull, there must be some warm or
+lively tinges of color in the costume, and vice versa. But it is easier
+to dress real figures than to generalize.
+
+Cornelia Jackson is the rector’s daughter, and hasn’t above $200 a year
+to spend on her clothes and to buy Christmas presents. She is a little
+too plump, is brown, with some warm color in her cheeks in summer, and
+has dark hair. Her face never would be noticed except for the jollity
+lurking in it, which she inherits from her father. In winter and fall,
+when she looks pale, she “tones up” with a morning dress of all-wool
+stuff, one of those brown grounds with small bunches of brilliant
+crimson or purple flowers--a cheery pattern that the rector likes
+behind the coffee urn of a cold morning--with crisp white ruffles, set
+off by the brown dress. Crimson or purple, in soft brilliant shades,
+are her colors for neck-ties. Her street dress is a dark walnut-brown
+cloth, trimmed with cross-cut velvet the same shade. The over-skirts
+of Cornelia’s dresses are always long, so that she will not look like
+a fishing-bob or a doll pin-cushion; and there is deep rose-color
+about her bonnet. Not roses, by the way--she has an unspoken feeling
+that it is not for every body to wear roses--but velvety mallows and
+double stocks, imitations of fragrant common garden flowers that are
+very like herself. The brown and crimson maiden is a pleasant sight
+of a winter’s day, when the gray of the church and white of the snow
+need something warm to come between them. In summer she chooses, or
+her cousin in New York chooses for her, not the light percales that
+every one else is wearing, nor the grays and stone-colors that walk to
+church every Sunday, but écru linens, with relief of black or brown for
+morning, when she goes from pantry to garden, and from sewing-machine
+to nursery. Afternoons she doesn’t divide herself by putting on a white
+blouse and colored skirt, or a buff redingote over a black train, but
+wears a dress of one color, that looks as if it were meant to stay at
+home. White nansook is her delight, its semi-transparency wonderfully
+suiting her clear brownness, but solid white linen or cambric she
+eschews. Soft violet jaconet, and the whole family of lilacs, are
+made for her; and she is luxurious in ruffles and flounces on her
+demi-trained skirts, since she makes and often irons them herself.
+Black grenadine, of course, she wears, with high lining to give her
+waist its full length, every bit of which it needs; and she is not too
+utilitarian to neglect the aid which a modest demi-train on a house
+dress gives to her height. All the other girls may wear puffed waists
+and pleated waists. She knows they are not for her plump shoulders,
+though clusters of fine tucks on a blouse give length to the waist,
+and lessen the width of the back. Shawls she never wears, nor short
+perky basques, that are considered--I don’t know why--the proper thing
+for stout figures. Her choice is the long polonaise, and the French
+jacket, which by its short shoulders and simple lines conveys a decent
+comeliness of figure to any one who wears it. If she had a party dress,
+it would be white muslin, or light silvery green silk, trimmed with
+pleatings of tulle, and with them she would wear her mother’s pearls,
+or her own fine carbuncles.
+
+Mrs. Senator, with all her fortune and position, is doomed to hear
+people speak of her in under-tones at parties, “She is rich, but very
+plain.” Being a shrewd woman, she does not waste her efforts on trying
+to alter her thin features, nor does she make herself ridiculous by
+a false complexion of rouge and pearl-powder, though her face and her
+hair are about of a brownness. But on her entry into Washington society
+she defied criticism by appearing with her hair créped to show its
+soft brown lights and shades, and give the best outline to her head,
+her gypsy face opposed to a dead white silk, of Parisian origin, with
+flounce of pleated muslin, and corsage trimmings of rich lace. It is
+a real dress and a real woman that is described, and it is no fiction
+that she was the success of the evening. The colorless dress without
+_reflets_, and her ornaments of clustered pearls, were in most artistic
+contrast to the nut-brown hair and dusky face. A spot of color would
+have destroyed the charm. The dress stamped her, as she was, a woman
+of skill sufficient to draw from the most unlikely combination the
+elements of novel and complete success.
+
+The girl who sits near me at the hotel table tries my eyes with her
+thin, curious features, her pale, frizzed hair, that makes her face
+more peaked than it is, and her oversized skirts. She ought not to wear
+those light dresses, for she has no color, and her thin complexion is
+not even clear. She has that difficult figure to dispose of, which is
+at once girlish and tall, without seeming so. A trained dress would
+make her look lean, so she should dispense with a large tournure, and
+let her dresses brush the floor a few inches, wearing as many small
+flounces below the knee as fashion and sense allow. If her mother, who
+is rather a strict lady, would insist on having the girl’s dresses made
+with puffed waists, or loose blouses of thick linen, instead of the
+Victoria lawns that iron so flat, and show the poor shoulder-blades
+frightfully, the effect would be rather delightful. She ought to wear
+puffed grenadines and lenos of maroon, rosy lilac, or deep green--the
+first lighted with pale rosy bows at the throat and in the hair, the
+latter with light green and white, the lilac with periwinkle knots. How
+one would like to dress her over again, and turn the poor thing out
+charming as she ought to be. Her hair-dressing would all have to be
+done over again. Sharp-featured people shouldn’t wear curls, which make
+the peaked effect still more prominent. Soft waves, drawn lightly away
+from the face and brushed up from the neck behind, would be better, and
+smooth braids best of all, with little waves peeping out under them. If
+the young woman could train herself not to be excitable, or to smile so
+overcomingly, and not be so eager to meet new acquaintances, she would
+make a pleasing impression, while now she gets snubbed in a tacit way,
+and those who take her up out of pity hardly feel as if they were paid
+for it. If women with hay-colored hair could be brought to believe that
+light brown, of all others, wasn’t the color for their style, one could
+afford to overlook minor deficiencies.
+
+One is tempted to think sometimes that there is a loss in not adopting
+the French plan of lining houses with mirrors. If people continually
+caught sight of themselves, they would hardly indulge in the grimaces
+and gaucheries which they inflict on the world. It could hardly lead to
+vanity in most cases, and would settle many vexing problems of dress
+and demeanor. One is not always to be censured for studying the glass.
+The orator must use it to learn how to deliver his sentences with
+proper facial play and easy gesture. The public singer studies with a
+mirror on the music-rack to get the right position of the mouth for
+issuing the voice without making a face. The want of such training mars
+the work of some great artists with blemishes which nearly undo the
+effect of their talents.
+
+The injunction that all things should be done decently and in order
+means that they ought to be pleasing. The study of ourselves can
+hardly be complete without the aid of the mirror, which shows candidly
+the cold smile, the vacant, bashful gaze, we give our fellow-beings,
+instead of the decent attention, the kind, full glance it is meet
+they should have from us, and which we prefer to receive from them.
+It shows the frown, the sour melancholy, which creep over the face in
+reveries, and leads us to try and feel pleasant that we may look so.
+How much confidence one assuring glance at a mirror has given us in
+going to receive a visitor, and what kindly warning of what was amiss
+in expression or toilet before it was too late! Is our vanity so easily
+excited that we are ready to fall in love with ourselves at sight? The
+intimate acquaintance with our appearance which the glass can give is
+more likely to make one genuinely humble. In a world which owns among
+its maxims the gay and wicked refrain of “manners for us, morals for
+those who like them,” good people can not afford to neglect either
+their toilets or their mirrors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ Physical Education of Girls.--A Woman’s Value in the World.--High-bred
+   Figures.--Antique Races.--Inspiration of Art not Vanity.--The
+   Trying Age.--Dress, Food, and Bathing for Young Girls.--A Veto
+   on Close Study.--Braces and Backboards.--Never Talk of Girls’
+   Feelings.--Exercise for the Arms.--Singing Scales with Corsets
+   off.--Development of the Bust.--Open-work Corsets the Best.--The
+   Bayaderes of India and their Forms.--The Delicacy due Young Girls.--A
+   Frank but Needed Caution.--Care of the Figure after Nursing.
+
+
+American girls begin to make much of physical culture. As they advance
+in refinement they see how much of their value in society depends on
+the nerve and spirit which accompanies thorough development. It is not
+enough that they know how to dance languidly, and carry themselves in
+company. To distinguish herself, a young belle must row, swim, skate,
+ride, and even shoot, to say nothing of lessons in fencing, which
+noble ladies in Germany, and some of foreign family here, take to
+develop sureness of hand and agility. The heavy, flat-footed creature
+who can not walk across a room without betraying the bad terms her
+joints are on with each other, must have a splendid face and fortune
+to keep any place in the world, no matter how good her family, or how
+varied her acquirements, though she speaks seven languages like a
+native, and has played sonatas since she was eight years old. A woman’s
+value depends entirely on her use to the world and to that person who
+happens to have the most of her society. A man likes the society of
+a woman who can walk a mile or two to see an interesting view, and
+can take long journeys without being laid up by them. He likes smooth
+motions, round arms and throat, head held straight, and shoulders that
+do not bow out. When you see that a fine figure must be a straight line
+from the roots of the hair to the base of the shoulder-blade, you will
+realize how few women approach this high-bred ideal. Special culture,
+indeed, is discerned where such excellence of line meets the eye. The
+polished races of the East, who, untutored and degraded, yet have the
+entail of antique subtlety and art, inherit such figures along with the
+proverbs of sages and palace mosaics. The best-born of all countries
+have this noble set of head, this lance-like figure, and easy play of
+limb. As surely as one can be educated to right thoughts and manners,
+so the motions and poise of limb can be trained to correctness. The
+work must begin early. A girl should be put in training as soon as
+she passes from the plumpness of childhood into the ugly age of
+development. The mother should inspect her dressing to see what
+improvement is needed, and stimulate the child by the desire to possess
+beautiful limbs and figure. The senses are early awake to the sense of
+grace. There is no better way to inspire a girl with it than to take
+her to picture-galleries, show the faces of historical beauties, or
+the figures of Italian sculpture, and ask her if she would not like
+to have the same fine points herself. This substitutes the love of art
+for that of admiration, and makes self-cultivation too deep a thing for
+vanity.
+
+There is a time when girls are awkward, indolent, and capricious. Their
+boisterous spirits at one time, their sickly minauderies at another,
+are very trying to mothers and teachers. The cause is often set down
+as depravity, when it is only nature. Girls are lapsided and indolent
+because they are weak or languid, between which and being lazy there
+is a vast difference. They have demanding appetites that strike grown
+people with wonder. They go frantic on short notice when their wishes
+are crossed. Mother, if such is the case, your growing girl is weak.
+The nursery bath Saturday night is not enough. Encourage her to take
+a sponge-bath every day. When she comes in heated from a long walk or
+play, see that she bathes her knees, elbows, and feet in cold water,
+to prevent her growing nervous with fatigue when the excitement is
+over. See that she does not suffer from cold, and that she is not too
+warmly dressed, remembering a plump, active child will suffer with
+heat under the clothes it takes to keep you comfortable. If she is
+thin and sensitive, care must be taken against sudden chills. Keep
+her on very simple but well-flavored diet, with plenty of sour fruit,
+if she crave it, for the young have a facility for growing bilious,
+which acids correct. Sweet-pickles not too highly spiced are favorites
+with children, and better than sweetmeats. Nuts and raisins are more
+wholesome than candies. New cheese and cream are to be preferred to
+butter with bread and vegetables. Soup and a little of the best and
+juiciest meat should be given at dinner. But the miscellaneous stuffing
+that half-grown girls are allowed to indulge in ruins their complexion,
+temper, and digestion. No coffee nor tea should be taken by any human
+being till it is full-grown. The excitement of young nerves by these
+drinks is ruinous. Besides, the luxury and the stimulus is greater to
+the adult when debarred from these things through childhood. Neither
+mind nor body should be worked till maturity. Children will do all they
+ought in study and work without much urging; and they will learn more
+and remember more in two hours of study to five of play, than if the
+order is inverted. Say to a child, Get this lesson and you may go to
+play--and you will be astonished to see how rapidly it learns; but if
+one lesson is to succeed another till six dreary hours have dragged
+away, it loses heart, and learns merely what can not well be helped.
+A girl under eighteen ought not to practice at the piano or sit at a
+desk more than three quarters of an hour at a time. Then she should run
+out-of-doors ten minutes, or exercise, to relieve the nerves. An adult
+never ought to study or sit more than an hour without brief change
+before passing to the next. This keeps the head clearer, the limbs
+fresher, and carries one through a day with less fatigue than if one
+worked eight hours and then rested four.
+
+Thoughtful teachers do not share the prejudice against braces and
+backboards for keeping the figure straight, especially when young. It
+is the instinct of barbarous nations to use such aids in compelling
+erectness in their children. These appliances need not be painful
+in the least, but rather relieve tender muscles and bones. Languid
+girls should take cool sitz-baths to strengthen the muscles of the
+back and hips, which are more than ordinarily susceptible of fatigue
+when childhood is over. But _never_ talk of a girl’s feelings in mind
+or body before her, or suffer her to dwell on them. The effect is
+bad physically and mentally. See that these injunctions are obeyed
+implicitly; spare her the whys and wherefores. It is enough for her
+to know that she will feel better for them. Of all things, deliver us
+from valetudinarians of fifteen. Never laugh at them; never sneer;
+never indulge them in self-condolings. Be pitiful and sympathetic,
+but steadily turn their attention to something interesting outside of
+themselves.
+
+Special means are essential to special growth. Throwing quoits and
+sweeping are good exercises to develop the arms. There is nothing like
+three hours of house-work a day for giving a woman a good figure, and
+if she sleep in tight cosmetic gloves, she need not fear that her hands
+will be spoiled. The time to form the hands is in youth, and with
+thimbles for the finger-tips, and close gloves lined with cold cream,
+every mother might secure a good hand for her daughter. She should be
+particular to see that long-wristed lisle-thread gloves are drawn on
+every time the girl goes out. Veils she should discard, except in cold
+and windy weather, when they should be drawn close over the head. A
+broad-leafed hat for the country is protection enough for the summer;
+the rest of the year the complexion needs all the sun it can get.
+
+There is commonly a want of fullness in those muscles of the shoulder
+which give its graceful slope. This is developed by the use of the
+skipping-rope, in swinging it over the head, and by battledoor, which
+keeps the arms extended, at the same time using the muscles of the neck
+and shoulders. Swinging by the hands from a rope is capital, and so is
+swinging from a bar. These muscles are the last to receive exercise in
+common modes of life, and playing ball, bean-bags, or pillow-fights
+are convenient ways of calling them into action. Singing scales with
+corsets off, shoulders thrown back, lungs deeply inflated, mouth wide
+open, and breath held, is the best tuition for insuring that fullness
+to the upper part of the chest which gives majesty to a figure even
+when the bust is meagre. These scales should be practiced half an hour
+morning and afternoon, gaining two ends at once--increase of voice and
+perfection of figure.
+
+This brings us to the inquiries made by more than one correspondent
+for some means of developing the bust. Every mother should pay
+attention to this matter before her daughters think of such a thing
+for themselves, by seeing that their dresses are never in the least
+constricted across the chest, and that a foolish dressmaker never puts
+padding into their waists. The horrible custom of wearing pads is the
+ruin of natural figures, by heating and pressing down the bosom. This
+most delicate and sensitive part of a woman’s form must always be kept
+cool, and well supported by a linen corset. The open-worked ones are by
+far the best, and the compression, if any, should not be over the heart
+and fixed ribs, as it generally is, but just at the waist, for not more
+than the width of a broad waistband. Six inches of thick coutille over
+the heart and stomach--those parts of the body that have most vital
+heat--must surely disorder them and affect the bust as well. It would
+be better if the coutille were over the shoulders or the abdomen, and
+the whalebones of the corset held together by broad tapes, so that
+there would be less dressing over the heart, instead of more. A low,
+deep bosom, rather than a bold one, is a sign of grace in a full-grown
+woman, and a full bust is hardly admirable in an unmarried girl. Her
+figure should be all curves, but slender, promising a fuller beauty
+when maturity is reached. One is not fond of over-ripe pears.
+
+Flat figures are best dissembled by puffed and shirred blouse-waists,
+or by corsets with a fine rattan run in the top of the bosom gore,
+which throws out the fullness sufficiently to look well in a plain
+corsage. Of all things, India-rubber pads act most injuriously by
+constantly sweating the skin, and ruining the bust beyond hope of
+restoration. To improve its outlines, wear a linen corset fitting
+so close at the end of the top gores as to support the bosom well.
+For this the corset must be fitted to the skin, and worn next the
+under-flannel. Night and morning wash the bust in the coldest
+water--sponging it upward, but never down. Madame Celnart relates that
+the bayaderes of India cultivate their forms by wearing a cincture
+of linen under the breasts, and at night chafing them lightly with
+a piece of linen. The breasts should never be touched but with the
+utmost delicacy, as other treatment renders them weak and flaccid,
+and not unfrequently results in cancer. A baby’s bite has more than
+once inflicted this disease upon its mother. But one thing is to be
+solemnly cautioned, that no human being--doctor, nurse, nor the mother
+herself--on any pretense, save in case of accident, be allowed to touch
+a girl’s figure. It would be unnecessary to say this, were not French
+and Irish nurses, especially old and experienced, ones, sometimes in
+the habit of stroking the figures of young girls committed to their
+charge, with the idea of developing them. This is not mentioned
+from hearsay. Mothers can not be too careful how they leave their
+children with even well-meaning servants. A young girl’s body is more
+sensitive than any harp is to the air that plays upon it. Nature--free,
+uneducated, and direct--responds to every touch on that seat of the
+nerves, the bosom, by an excitement that is simply ruinous to a
+child’s nervous system. This is pretty plain talking, but no plainer
+than the subject demands. Girls are very different in their feelings.
+Some affectionate, innocent, hearty natures remain through their
+lives as simple as when they were babes taking their bath under their
+mothers’ hands; while others, equally innocent but more susceptible,
+require to be guarded and sheltered even from the violence of a caress
+as if from contagion and pain.
+
+Due attention to the general health always has its effect in restoring
+the bust to its roundness. It is a mistake that it is irremediably
+injured by nursing children. A babe may be taught not to pinch and bite
+its mother, and the exercise of a natural function can injure her in no
+way, if proper care is taken to sustain the system at the same time.
+Cold compresses of wet linen worn over the breast are very soothing
+and beneficial, provided they do not strike a chill to a weak chest.
+At the same time, the cincture should be carefully adjusted. Weakness
+of any kind affects the contour of the figure, and it is useless to
+try to improve it in any other way than by restoring the strength
+where it is wanting. Tepid sitz-baths strengthen the muscles of the
+hips, and do away with that dragging which injures the firmness of
+the bosom. Bathing in water to which ammonia is added strengthens the
+skin, but the use of camphor to dry the milk after weaning a child is
+reprehensible. No drying or heating lotions of any kind should ever be
+applied except in illness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ Hands and Complexions.--Preparing for Parties.--Refining Rough
+   Faces.--Carbolic Baths.--Chalk and Cascarilla.--Glycerine
+   Wash.--School-girls’ Flushed Hands and Faces.--To Soften the
+   Hands.--Red Noses.--Secrets of Making-up.--Cologne for the
+   Eyes.--Cosmetic Gloves.--To Impart a Brilliant Complexion.
+
+
+People are in trouble in cold weather about their hands and their
+complexions, which take the time when parties abound, and owners
+need their very best looks, to put on a ruinous air. It is more than
+suspected that the young lady who begs for some good face powder or
+wash that will hide a bad complexion without spoiling it entirely,
+has the end in view of making herself presentable in society for the
+winter. Her entirely reasonable request shall be attended to, no less
+on her own account than because she writes in the name of four devoted
+subscribers. Carbolic soaps fail to remove the roughness of her used
+complexion, and internal remedies must be resorted to. These should
+be prescribed by a physician, and would be passed over at once to his
+province had not long experience shown that doctors scoff at the idea
+of prescribing for such puny troubles as flesh-worms and pimples while
+there are so many typhoid fevers and chronic ulcers to be treated.
+The pimples foretold the fever, and the impurities that first showed
+themselves in the shape of “black-heads” might have been discharged
+at the time, and not left to malignant issues. Pimples are disease
+of a light form, and nature tries to throw off in this way bad blood
+that might give one a worse turn if kept in the body. It can not be
+said too often that next to keeping murder and wickedness out of one’s
+soul is the necessity of keeping one’s blood pure by good food, strict
+cleanliness, warmth, and bright, sweet air. These troublesome pimples
+are a sign that the young ladies who complain of them have eaten
+food that did not suit them, eaten irregularly, or not bathed often
+enough, since some skins require more frequent cleansing and stimulus
+than others, because they secrete more. Perhaps other functions are
+disturbed, or the blood is not stirred enough by lively exercise.
+Directions for diet have been given before in these pages. It will be
+enough to recommend people with irritable blood to drink a glass or
+two of mild cider, or eat oranges or lemons, as they fancy, within
+the half hour before each meal, especially before breakfast. As hard
+work or exercise as one can endure stirs sluggish secretions, and work
+should always be brisk. Many a young woman mopes over house-work day
+after day, standing on her feet most of the time, and fancies that she
+has exercise, when her slow blood does not once in ten hours receive
+impulse enough to send it vigorously from head to foot in a way one
+could call living. “Work swiftly and rest well,” ought to be a woman’s
+rule. When the blood flows swiftly, the eye is clear, the sight better,
+the skin refined, and the whole body feels improvement; memory and
+thought are improved, idleness takes wing, and happiness steals into
+the heart.
+
+Young ladies should not give up their bathing with carbolic soap. Hot
+water, with a spoonful of prophylactic fluid or phenyl to each quart,
+is a very wholesome bath in skin disorders, followed by a brisk rub
+with crash till warm, or wrapping in a blanket by the fire till all
+danger of chilliness is past. The phenyl and prophylactic fluid are
+milder forms of carbolic acid, and, like it, disinfectant and healing.
+A sponge-bath or plunge at seventy-five degrees after a hot bath
+prevents all weakening effects and taking cold. None but robust persons
+should ever take baths except in a warm room. The bath-room should
+always be so arranged as to be heated in a few minutes. Otherwise the
+bath is best taken in one’s own room before the fire.
+
+The disguise for a bad skin is easily found. Refined chalk is the
+safest thing to use, and costs far less by its own name than put up
+in photograph boxes as “Lily White,” etc. Cascarilla powder, which
+the Cuban ladies use so much, is recommended as entirely harmless.
+It is prepared from a root used in medicine, and in New York is
+sold at all the little Cuban shops, with cigars, tropic sweetmeats,
+and other necessaries of life. Either wash the face with thick suds
+from glycerine soap, and dust the powder on with a swan’s-down puff,
+removing superfluous traces with a fresh puff kept for the purpose,
+or else grind the powder in wet linen by pressing it in the fingers,
+and apply what oozes through to the skin. A fine wash for a rough or
+sunburned skin is made of two ounces of distilled water, one ounce
+of glycerine, one ounce of alcohol, and half an ounce of tincture
+of benzoin. Without the water, and with the addition of two ounces
+of prepared chalk free from bismuth, it makes a far better cosmetic
+for whitening the face than any of the expensive “Balms of Youth” or
+“Magnolia Blooms.” If a flesh tint is desired, add a grain of carmine.
+
+The lesser trial of rough, red hands that are not chapped but
+unsightly, when not caused by exposure and work, indicates bad
+circulation of the blood. School-girls who study a good deal without
+due exercise often go home with flushed faces and red hands, to say
+nothing of an irritable state of the nerves, that can only be righted
+by very regular sleep and exercise, aided by hot foot-baths. Out-door
+exercise in winter is an excellent corrective for rush of blood to the
+head. Dancing brings the blood into play more healthfully than any
+movement allowed to grown women. The hands are improved by wearing
+gloves that fit closely, especially if they are of soft castor or
+dog-skin. In most cases, all that is needed to soften hands is to rub
+sweet-almond oil into the skin two or three days in succession. A
+quicker way than this in the country is to hold the hand on a rapidly
+turning grindstone a moment or two. It leaves the palm, forefinger, and
+thumb satin smooth, and removes callosities incredibly quick, taking
+off bad stains at the same time. Farmers’ girls will take note of
+this, and also that rubbing the hands with a slice of raw potato will
+remove vegetable stains. Rubbing the hands well with almond-oil, and
+plastering them with as much fine chalk as they can take, on going to
+bed, will usually whiten them in three days’ time, and this hint may be
+of service before a party of consequence.
+
+Redness of the nose is a sign of bad circulation and of humor in the
+blood. It is best treated by applications of phenyl, rubbed on often
+each day, and by alteratives. A spoonful of white mustard-seed taken
+in water before breakfast every morning is of service in this case
+and in rush of blood to the head, which always has something to do
+with constipation. Refined chalk made into a thick plaster with one
+third as much glycerine as water, and spread on the parts, will cool
+erysipelatous inflammation and reduce the redness.
+
+The secrets of “making-up” have hardly all been mentioned, though the
+list is growing long. What girl does not know that eating lump-sugar
+wet with Cologne just before going out will make her eyes bright, or
+that the homelier mode of flirting soap-suds into them has the same
+effect? Spanish ladies squeeze orange juice into their eyes to make
+them shine. A Continental recipe for whitening the hands looks strong
+enough: Take half a pound of soft-soap, a gill of salad-oil, an ounce
+of mutton tallow, and boil together; after boiling ceases, add one
+gill of spirits of wine and a scruple of ambergris; rip a pair of
+gloves three sizes too large, spread them with this paste, and sew up
+to be worn at night. A curious wash, evidently Italian in its origin,
+is: Equal parts of melon, pumpkin, gourd, and cucumber seeds pounded
+to powder, softened with cream, and thinned to a paste with milk,
+perfumed with a grain of musk and three drops of oil of lemon (oil of
+jasmine may be substituted for the musk). The face, bosom, and arms
+are anointed with this overnight, and washed off in warm water in
+the morning. The authority quoted says it adds remarkable purity and
+brilliance to the complexion. Such pains will women take for that
+beauty which, after all, is only skin deep. But did not De Staël say
+she would give half her knowledge for personal charms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ Women’s Looks and Nerves.--A Low-toned Generation.--Children and their
+   Ways.--Brief Madness.--Women in the Woods.--Singing.--Work well done
+   the Easiest.--Sleep the Remedy for Temper.--Hours for Sleep.--The
+   Great Medicines--Sunshine, Music, Work, and Sleep.
+
+
+Women’s looks depend too much on the state of their nerves and their
+peace of mind to pass them over. The body at best is the perfect
+expression of the soul. The latter may light wasted features to
+brilliance, or turn a face of milk and roses dark with passion or dead
+with dullness; it may destroy a healthy frame or support a failing one.
+Weak nerves may prove too much for the temper of St. John, and break
+down the courage of Saladin. Better things are before us, coming from a
+fuller appreciation of the needs of body and soul, but the fact remains
+that this is a generation of weak nerves. It shows particularly in the
+low tone of spirits common to men and women. They can not bear sunshine
+in their houses; they find the colors of Jacques Minot roses and of
+Gérome’s pictures too deep; the waltz in _Traviata_ is too brilliant,
+Rossini’s music is too sensuous, and Wagner’s too sensational;
+Mendelssohn is too light, Beethoven too cold. Their work is fuss;
+instead of resting, they idle--and there is a wide difference between
+the two things. People who drink strong tea and smoke too many cigars,
+read or stay in-doors too much, find the hum of creation too loud for
+them. The swell of the wind in the pines makes them gloomy, the sweep
+of the storm prostrates them with terror, the everlasting beating of
+the surf and the noises of the streets alike weary their worthless
+nerves. The happy cries of school-children at play are a grievance to
+them; indeed, there are people who find the chirp of the hearth cricket
+and the singing tea-kettle intolerable. But it is a sign of diseased
+nerves. Nature is full of noises, and only where death reigns is there
+silence. One wishes that the men and women who can’t bear a child’s
+voice, a singer’s practice, or the passing of feet up and down stairs
+might be transported to silence like that which wraps the poles or
+the spaces beyond the stars, till they could learn to welcome sound,
+without which no one lives.
+
+Children must make noise, and a great deal of it, to be healthy. The
+shouts, the racket, the tumble and turmoil they make, are nature’s
+way of ventilating their bodies, of sending the breath full into the
+very last corner of the lungs, and the blood and nervous fluid into
+every cord and fibre of their muscles. Instead of quelling their riot,
+it would be a blessing to older folks to join it with them. There is
+an awful truth following this assertion. Do you know that men and
+women go mad after the natural stimulus which free air and bounding
+exercise supply? It is the lack of this most powerful inspiration,
+which knows no reaction, that makes them drunkards, gamesters, and
+flings them into every dissipation of body and soul. Men and women,
+especially those leading studious, repressed lives, often confess to a
+longing for some fierce, brief madness that would unseat the incubus
+of their lives. Clergymen, editors, writing women, and those who lead
+sedentary lives, have said in your hearing and mine that something
+ailed them they could not understand. They felt as if they would like
+to go on a spree, dance the tarantella, or scream till they were tired.
+They thought it the moving of some depraved impulse not yet rooted
+out of their natures, and to subdue it cost them hours of struggle
+and mortification. Poor souls! They need not have visited themselves
+severely if they had known the truth that this lawless longing was
+the cry of idle nerve and muscle, frantic through disuse. What the
+clergyman wanted was to leave his books and his subdued demeanor for
+the hill-country, for the woods, where he could not only walk, but
+leap, run, shout, and wrestle, and sing at the full strength of his
+voice. The editor needed to leave his cigar and the midnight gas-light
+for a wherry race, or a jolly roll and tumble on the green. The woman,
+most of all, wanted a tent built for her on the shore, or on the dry
+heights of the pine forest, where she would have to take sun by day
+and balsamic air by night; where she would have to leap brooks, gather
+her own fire-wood, climb rocks, and laugh at her own mishaps. Or, if
+she were city-pent, she needed to take some child to the Park and play
+ball with it, and run as I saw an elegant girl dressed in velvet and
+furs run through Madison Square one winter day with her little sister.
+The nervous, capricious woman must be sent to swimming-school, or
+learn to throw quoits or jump the rope, to wrestle or to sing. There
+is nothing better for body and mind than learning to sing, with proper
+method, under a teacher who knows how to direct the force of the voice,
+to watch the strength, and expand the emotions at the same time. The
+health of many women begins to improve from the time they study music.
+Why? Because it furnishes an outlet for their feelings, and equally
+because singing exerts the lungs and muscles of the chest which lie
+inactive. The power for the highest as well as the lowest note is
+supplied by the bellows of the lungs, worked by the mighty muscles of
+the chest and sides. In this play the red blood goes to every tiny cell
+that has been white and faint for want of its food; the engorged brain
+and nervous centres where the blood has settled, heating and irritating
+them, are relieved; the head feels bright, the hands grow warm, the
+eyes clear, and the spirits lively. This is after singing strongly for
+half an hour. The same effect is gained by any other kind of brisk work
+that sets the lungs and muscles going, but as music brings emotion into
+play, and is a pleasure or a relief as it is melancholy or gay, it is
+preferable. The work that engages one’s interest as well as strength
+is always the best. Per contra, whatever one does thoroughly and with
+dispatch seldom continues distasteful. There is more than we see at a
+glance in the command, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with
+thy might.” The reason given, because the time is short for all the
+culture and all the good work we wish to accomplish, is the apparent
+one; but the root of it lies in the necessities of our being. Only work
+done with our might will satisfy our energies and keep their balance.
+Half the women in the world are suffering from chronic unrest, morbid
+ambitions, and disappointments that would flee like morning mist before
+an hour of hearty, tiring work.
+
+It is not so much matter what the work is, as how it is done.
+
+The weak should take work up by degrees, working half an hour and
+resting, then going at it steadily again. It is better to work a little
+briskly and rest than to keep on the slow drag through the day. Learn
+not only to do things well, but to do them quickly. It is disgraceful
+to loiter and drone over one’s work. It is intolerable both in music
+and in life.
+
+The body, like all slaves, has the power to react on its task-master.
+All mean passions appear born of diseased nerves. Was there ever a
+jealous woman who did not have dyspepsia, or a high-tempered one
+without a tendency to spinal irritation? Heathen tempers in young
+people are a sign of wrong health, and mothers should send for
+physician as well as priest to exorcise them. The great remedy for
+temper is--sleep. No child that sleeps enough will be fretful; and the
+same thing is nearly as true of children of larger growth. Not less
+than eight hours is the measure of sleep for a healthy woman under
+fifty. She may be able to get on with less, and do considerable work,
+either with mind or hands. But she could do so much more, to better
+satisfaction, by taking one or two hours more sleep, that she can not
+afford to lose it. Women who use their brains--teachers, artists,
+writers, and housewives (whose minds are as hard wrought in overseeing
+a family as those of any one who works with pen or pencil)--need all
+the sleep they can get. From ten to six, or, for those who do not
+want to lose theatres and lectures altogether, from eleven to seven,
+are hours not to be infringed upon by women who want clear heads and
+steady tempers. What they gain by working at night they are sure to
+lose next day, or the day after. It is impossible to put the case too
+strongly. Unless one has taken a narcotic, and sleeps too long, one
+should _never_ be awakened. The body rouses itself when its demands are
+satisfied. A warm bath on going to bed is the best aid to sleep. People
+often feel drowsy in the evening about eight or nine o’clock, but are
+wide awake at eleven. They should heed the warning. The system needs
+more rest than it gets, and is only able to keep up by drawing on its
+reserve forces. Wakefulness beyond the proper time is a sign of ill
+health as much as want of appetite at meals--it is a pity that people
+are not as much alarmed by it. The brain is a more delicate organ than
+the stomach, and nothing so surely disorders it as want of sleep.
+In trouble or sorrow, light sedatives should be employed, like red
+lavender or the bromate of potassa, for the nerves have more to bear,
+and need all the rest they can get. The warm bath, I repeat, is better
+than either.
+
+Sunshine, music, work, and sleep are the great medicines for women.
+They need more sleep than men, for they are not so strong, and their
+nerves perhaps are more acute. Work is the best cure for ennui and for
+grief. Let them sing, whether of love, longing, or sorrow, pouring out
+their hearts, till the love returns into their own bosoms, till the
+longing has spent its force, or till the sorrow has lifted itself into
+the sunshine, and taken the hue of trust, not of despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+ Changing Wigs and Chignons.--Matching Braids.--Frizzing the
+   Hair.--Crimping-pins.--Blonde Hair-pins.--What Colors
+   Hair.--Bleaching Tresses.--Sulphur Paste.--Foxy Locks.--Freshening
+   Switches.
+
+
+The secret of content for most women is not perfection, but change.
+They can not even be satisfied with their looks long at a time; but
+Mary, Queen of Hearts as well as Scots, must draw an auburn wig
+over her luxurious tresses, dark and smelling of violets, for which
+regal-haired Elizabeth would have given the ruffs out of her best
+gowns, and her recipe for yellow starch with them. The “pretty Miss
+Vavasour,” who changed her chignon every morning with her costume,
+was a type of the fickle beauties of the day, who are always better
+satisfied with some other woman’s style than their own. Women of
+intelligence send urgent requests for something to change the color of
+their hair, either to make the front locks match the châtelaine braid,
+or to bleach it outright. Fair blondes, whose sunny locks have been
+their pride, find with dismay that this infantile tinge, which makes a
+woman look so young and charming, is deepening into mature ash-brown--a
+shade with no prestige or attraction whatever. In their exact eyes it
+is mortifying to wear a blonde braid several degrees lighter than the
+crown tresses. These last are growing, and constantly change, while the
+ends keep their early tinge. Very few light-haired people pass from
+youth to middle age without such a change. But, unless the difference
+is very startling, it may be made agreeable by skillfully dressing
+the hair. Light or varied hair should be crimped or waved, when its
+tints will appear like the play of light and shade. Contrary to all
+writers on this point, I contend that crimping does not necessarily
+injure the hair. If it is killed--pulled out by the roots, or broken by
+frizzing--the blame is due to careless or ignorant dressing. My own
+hair was dressed regularly twice or thrice a week with hot irons for
+years, and it never grew so fast or was in such a satisfactory state.
+It was thoroughly combed and brushed, kept clean by weekly washing,
+and each time it went under the curling-tongs it came out moist and
+stimulated by the heat. The reason was, the clever French coiffeur
+knew his business, and never allowed the hot iron to come directly in
+contact with the hair. Each lock was done up in papillotes, and then
+pinched with irons as hot as could be without scorching. Stiff hair may
+be trained to curl by long and patient treatment with hot irons, and
+be all the better for it. The secret of safe hair-dressing is never to
+pull the hair, never scorch, and always wrap a lock in paper before
+applying the iron. Common round curling-irons and frizzing-tongs may
+be safety used if thin Manilla paper is folded once around them. So
+in crimping: the hair may be done up on stout crimping-pins held by
+slides, or braided in and out of a loop of thick cord, a bit of thin
+paper folded over the crimp, and the pinching-iron used with safety
+every day, provided the hair is not pulled too tight in braiding it.
+The country method, where friseur’s irons are unknown, is to lay the
+head on a table, and set a hot smoothing-iron on the woven lock--an
+awkward but efficient process. It is not good to put the hair up on
+metal pins or hair-pins overnight for two reasons: the perspiration
+of the head will rust the pins, insensibly, so that they will cut the
+hair; and the contact of iron with the sulphurous gas given out by hair
+during sleep tends to darken and render the color displeasing. Rubber
+crimping-pins, fastened by a rubber catch, are a late invention, and a
+great improvement. But a loop of thick elastic cord is better than any
+thing. The hair is woven in and out as on a hair-pin, the elastic holds
+it when the fingers are withdrawn, and it is pleasanter to sleep in
+than half a dozen stiff pins. I know more than one piquant little lady
+whose “naturally” waving tresses are the admiration of her friends by
+this simple means; and as the process has gone on for years without
+lessening the flow of ruffled hair, it must be conceded that crimping
+does not always hurt it. Iron hair-pins hurt the head more than a
+generation of friseurs. The latest accusation against them is that they
+draw off the healthy electricity of the head; and to a generation which
+complains of paralysis from using steel pens, and uses patent glass
+insulators for the legs of its bedsteads, this will seem no frivolous
+charge. The patent insulators are a fact. Their use is advised by
+medical men for all neuralgic, rheumatic, and sleepless people, and
+one of the largest glass firms in New York makes their manufacture a
+specialty. The patent and perfect hair-pin is not yet invented. Rubber
+pins are clumsy if harmless, but there are gilt hair-pins made of a
+yellow composition metal which are pleasanter to use than common ones,
+and very becoming in blonde hair. Dark-haired people must stick to the
+rubber pins, or at least see that their black ones are well japanned,
+so as not to cut their locks.
+
+Now, to give an opinion about the change of hair, we must know
+something of its nature, and what colors it. Wise men say that light
+hair is owing to an abundance of sulphur in the system, and dark hair
+to an excess of iron. So if we comb light or red locks with lead combs
+for a long time, the lead acts on the sulphureted hydrogen evolved by
+the hair, and darkens it. If we can neutralize the iron in any way, a
+contrary effect will be obtained. To do this, work at the dark hair
+precisely as if it were an ink-spot to be taken out. The skin should
+not suffer, and to prevent this, oil it carefully along the parting,
+edges, and crown of the head, wiping the oil from the hair with a soft
+cloth. Oxalic acid, strong and hot, is the best thing to take out spots
+of ink made with iron, and we may try this with the hair. To apply
+this, or any of the preparations named, one should be in undress,
+wearing not a single article whose destruction would be of account,
+for all the acids and bleaching powders used ruin clothes if a drop
+touch them, taking the color out, and eating holes in the stoutest
+fabrics. The eyelids and brows should be well oiled to prevent the acid
+from attacking them, and the hands, shoulders, and face will be the
+better for similar protection. On one ounce of pure, strong oxalic acid
+pour one pint of boiling water, and, as soon as the hands can bear it,
+wet the head with a sponge, not sapping it, but moistening thoroughly.
+The effect may be hastened by holding the head in strong sunlight, or
+over a register, or the steam of boiling water. Five minutes ought to
+show a decided change, but if it do not, wet again and again, allowing
+the acid to remain as long as it does not eat the skin. This may not be
+hard to bear, but it will make the hair fall out.
+
+Another mode is to cover the hair with a paste of powdered sulphur
+and water, and sit in the sun with it for several hours. The Venetian
+ladies used to steep their tresses in caustic solutions, and sit in
+their balconies in the sun all day, bleaching it; and yet another day,
+that the same rays might turn it yellow. Perhaps they gained by their
+folly in one way what they lost in another, for such an airing and
+sunning would benefit the health of any woman. A paste of bisulphate of
+magnesia and lime is very effectual for bleaching the hair; but it must
+be used with great caution not to burn hair, skin, and brains together.
+The moment it begins seriously to attack the skin it should be washed
+off in three waters, with lemon juice or vinegar in the last one to
+neutralize the alkali. These pastes are recommended to turn ash-colored
+hair light. To bleach dark hair is a long and tedious process, and
+such an utter piece of foolery that I do not care to recount the
+directions for it. The desire to change the color of the hair can only
+be justified when it is of a dull and sickly appearance, and this is
+best mended by improving the general health. Hair can not be glossy,
+rich-colored, and thick unless the bodily vigor is what it should
+be. Indeed, hair is one of the surest indexes to the state of health.
+Scorched and foxy locks are a sign of neglect and of bad secretions.
+Brushing remedies the first condition, hygiene the next. But among
+the varieties of treatment specially appropriate to restoration of
+the hair, sulphur vapor-baths must once more be mentioned. Doses of
+sulphur, taken in Dotheboys’ fashion weekly, with molasses, will be
+of service in keeping the blood pure, and in time will affect the
+hair; but this powerful agent should not be used without advice of a
+physician, and the dose should be always followed by simple purgatives,
+like mustard-seed, figs, or prunes, eaten freely. Chlorines and
+chlorides are specifics for bleaching hair, but they turn it gray or
+white, and the yellow tinge is dyed afterward. Sulphurous applications
+are the safest, if common caution is used not to take cold afterward or
+to breathe any fumes from them.
+
+Switches that have lost freshness may be very much improved by dipping
+them into common ammonia without dilution. Half a pint is enough for
+the purpose. The life and color of the hair is revived as if it were
+just cut from the head. This dipping should be repeated once in three
+months, to free the switch from dust, as well as to insure safety from
+parasitic formations. The subject of coloring the hair will be spoken
+of in another chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+ Hair and Complexion.--Black Dyes.--Persian Blue-Black.--Peroxide of
+   Hydrogen.--Chloride of Gold.--Transient Dyes.
+
+
+If it were easy to change the color of one’s hair, and possible to fix
+that change, which it is not, the result in most cases would be far
+from desirable. Nature tints hair and complexion in harmony with each
+other, and both should be deepened if one is altered. Human pictures
+as well as canvas would often be improved by bringing out the colors,
+but the free hand of Health, that divine artist, is the only one whose
+work is tolerable or enduring. In health this harmony of tint is varied
+and delicate, ranging from the rose-and-snow complexions that suit the
+true _blonde dorée_, the translucent honeysuckle-pink that sets off
+red-brown, blue-black, and olive-brown hair with decided warmth of
+cheeks, or purple-black reflets of the tresses with Spanish crimson,
+or rather the burning rose of tropic blood seen through smooth skin.
+Occasionally there comes an exciting discord, a minor strain of color
+that affects one like subtle music, such as the finding of dark eyes
+and golden hair, or clear, brilliant blue eyes in a gypsy face; but it
+is impossible to compose heads in reality with any satisfying results
+as yet. We have yet to learn how to work from the inside out, which is
+the only true method with human modeling.
+
+All that can be said on this point, however, will not make the
+red-haired girl one whit less ardent in her desire to see her locks
+of darker shade, that they may be less conspicuous, or keep the
+dark-haired woman from the coveted vision of bright locks and black
+eyes. It is useless to talk about the dangers of the process, or
+hint that orpiment and realgar are deadly poisons. If every hair had
+to turn into a living snake while undergoing the change, it would
+hardly daunt this courageous vanity. The best to be hoped from any
+farther enlightenment is that they will renounce these active poisons
+for something comparatively harmless. _Du reste_, all readers will
+be interested in the secrets of the toilet, and the sight of science
+turned coiffeur.
+
+It is comparatively a simple matter to dye hair black. Sulphur is one
+of the constituents of hair, which exhales it constantly in the form
+of sulphureted hydrogen, fortunately of the weakest sort, or it would
+be intolerable. When wet with a solution of certain metals, the action
+of this gas turns the hair black. Lead combs owe their efficiency to
+this cause. The lead which rubs on the hair is darkened by the gas,
+but the trace of lead at each combing is so slight that the operation
+must be many times repeated before it takes effect. But lead-coloring,
+whether applied by combs or by the paste of litharge, is a slow poison,
+not seldom causing paralysis, and even death. The absorption of lead
+into the system at any part is dangerous, but trebly so when applied
+so closely to the brain. The tint given by this means, as well as that
+dyed with nitrate of silver, is unnatural, greenish, and rusty in the
+light, needing continual repetition to appear decent.
+
+Orientals are in the habit of dyeing their hair and beards the deep
+jetty black which they admire, if nature have not given them the
+desired depth of color. For this purpose Turks and Egyptians use a
+thick solution of native iron ore in pyrogallic acid, which gives the
+blackest and most unimpeachable color. The Persians prefer blue-black,
+and use indigo to produce it. European hair-dyers use a solution of
+iron, with hydrosulphate of ammonia to develop and fix the color, but
+the odor is objectionable. Dyes need to be applied once a week to
+keep the color vivid, and it is well to touch the partings twice as
+often with a fine comb dipped in the dye, as the hair always shows the
+natural color as fast as it grows from the roots.
+
+Red and flaxen hair is changed to gold with little trouble, but dark
+hair must be bleached with chlorine before the desired tinge is given.
+The bleaching is the most difficult part of the work. Solutions sold
+for the purpose oftenest consist of peroxide of hydrogen--a somewhat
+costly liquid, I am told. Solution of sulphurous acid will also bleach
+hair; so will solutions of bisulphide of magnesia and of lime. The
+hair, properly faded or whitened, is colored yellow with solutions of
+cadmium, arsenic, or gold, but the cause of the change is the same
+that produces black dye. The reaction of sulphureted hydrogen on
+silver or lead turns things black, but on the metals first named turns
+them yellow. Arsenic in the shape of orpiment or realgar, two deadly
+poisons, is the base of most golden hair-dyes, and numerous cases of
+poisoning have resulted from their use. Cadmium is harmless, and yields
+quite as brilliant a tinge as arsenic, though less used. Chloride of
+gold dyes a very satisfactory brown, available for eyebrows, lashes,
+and whiskers. It must be used with exceeding care, however, for it
+stains the skin as well as the hair. If applied with a fine-tooth
+comb dipped in the liquid, combing the ends first, and ceasing just
+before the skin is reached, the dye will probably “take” by means of
+capillary attraction, without affecting the face. Cautious use of this
+preparation on the brows and lashes gives very pleasing results when
+these are much paler than the hair. They should be first carefully
+oiled, and the oil wiped off the hair, which is then touched with a
+fine sable pencil.
+
+Fortunately, bleaching and dyeing are both such tedious processes that
+this circumstance alone will keep many persons from submitting to
+their bondage. Once applied, the dye becomes a necessity, much harder
+to leave off than to begin, as the English Dr. Scoffern says, who is
+authority for most suggestions in this chapter. One can not blame those
+persons who brush the roots of the hair or forehead and neck with amber
+lavender to disguise their pale, unsightly appearance, and a touch of
+the same liquid on white eyebrows does no harm. Walnut bark, steeped
+a week in Cologne, gives a dye that is transient, but easily applied
+with a brush each day, and has instant effect. It takes a day or two to
+bleach hair, and hours to color it either black or yellow; and the work
+has to be done over month by month in a fashion that brings the victim
+to speedy repentance of her folly.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  Acid, Sulphurous, page 85.
+
+  Age, Devices of Uneasy, 212.
+
+  Amateur Hair-dressers, 89.
+
+  Appearance, how to Improve your Personal, 96.
+
+  Arabian Women Perfume themselves, how, 131.
+
+  Arms--
+    Whitening the, 64;
+    a Paste for Arms and Shoulders, 90;
+    how to Whiten the, 112;
+    a Paste for Whitening the, 128;
+    Exercise to Develop the, 231.
+
+  Artists, Woman’s, 87, 88.
+
+  Authors Eat, how, 102.
+
+  Awakened, Persons should not be, 255.
+
+  Awkward, when Girls are, 227.
+
+
+  Balconies and Parks, in, 98.
+
+  Banting System for Reducing Flesh, 175;
+    a Quaint Author, 176.
+
+  Bath--
+    Towels, 54;
+    Diana of Poitiers’, 71;
+    Sun, 97;
+    the Vapor, 129, 170;
+    Sulphur Vapor, 130;
+    Tepid, 152;
+    a Bath is an Extra at a Hotel, 168;
+    Sulphur, 170;
+    the Bran, 171;
+    the Russian Vapor, 205, 206, 207;
+    Sensations after a Russian, 208;
+    the Sitz, 230;
+    a Hot Soap-suds, 241;
+    a Sponge, 241;
+    a Warm Bath Good for the Nerves, 256.
+
+  Bathe, how Often we should, 171.
+
+  Bathing--
+    the Value of Hot, 54;
+    Magic Influence of, 89;
+    Bathing-Powder, 94;
+    Directions for, 159;
+    Experiments in Sulphur, 199;
+    Influence of, on Nerves and Passions, 209;
+    Bathing for Girls, 227.
+
+  Baths--
+    Sun, 20;
+    a Substitute for Sea, 55;
+    Fashionable, 87;
+    Public, 129, 201;
+    a Substitute for Vapor, 170;
+    Turkish Baths for Corpulency, 178;
+    Sulphur, 198;
+    Cautions about Sulphur Vapor, 200;
+    the Time to take Sulphur, 200;
+    Prices of Sulphur, 201;
+    how to take Sulphur, 202;
+    Hot Baths for Hot Weather, 203;
+    Russian Baths at Home, 204;
+    what Public Baths are, 205;
+    what Baths should be, 205;
+    Improvements Needed in Public, 205;
+    for Drunkards, 210.
+
+  Bay Rum for the Face, 172.
+
+  Bazin’s Pâte, 160.
+
+  Beauty--
+    the Worth of, 71;
+    Care of Personal, 72;
+    Beauty in the Human Form, 86;
+    Literature of, 136.
+
+  Bed, Time to go to, 255.
+
+  Beer, Root, 93.
+
+  Belle, a, must Row, Swim, Skate, and Ride, 224.
+
+  Belles of our Cities, Old, 149.
+
+  Bites of Insects on Children, 81.
+
+  Blackboards, 230.
+
+  Bleached by the Dawn, 97.
+
+  Blonde Hair, how to Make, 68;
+    Blonde Hair-pins, 261.
+
+  Blondes, Advice to, 20.
+
+  Blood, Mild Cider for Irritable, 240;
+    Dew-cool Air as a Blood Tonic, 97.
+
+  Bloom--
+    Almond, 65;
+    Decay of, 146.
+
+  Body, Nobility of the, 165.
+
+  Bonaparte, Princess Pauline--her Lovely Foot, 162.
+
+  Braces, 230;
+    Shoulder Braces, 38.
+
+  Braids, Matching, 258.
+
+  Brain--
+    Brain-work takes Food, 102;
+    the Brain Dependent on the Body, 167;
+    the Brain more Delicate than the Stomach, 256.
+
+  Bread, True, 99, 100.
+
+  Breakfasts, 98;
+    Christiana’s Breakfast, 98.
+
+  Breath--
+    an Offensive, 55;
+    how to Secure a Fragrant, 56.
+
+  Bust--
+    Development of the, 233;
+    Improving the, 234.
+
+
+  Calisthenics, 38.
+
+  Camphor for the Face, 172.
+
+  Carriage of Southern Women, 44.
+
+  Cascarilla Powder, 74.
+
+  Caution, a Needed, 235.
+
+  Cazenave’s, Dr., Composition for the Face, 73.
+
+  Celnart’s, Madame, Works of the Toilet, 134;
+    Recipe for Removing all Traces of Tobacco in the Breath, 156.
+
+  Chignons and Wigs, Changing, 257.
+
+  Chilblains, a Relief for, 190.
+
+  Children--
+    their Irritations, 121;
+    their Ways, 248, 249.
+
+  Chilliness is a Symptom of Diseases, 51.
+
+  Chills are Incipient Congestion, 52.
+
+  Christiana’s Looks, 96;
+    her Breakfast, 98.
+
+  Cider, Mild, for Irritable Blood, 240.
+
+  Cigars, People who Smoke too Many, 248.
+
+  Circulation, Charm of, 51.
+
+  Cleanliness means Health, 164.
+
+  Clergymen, Sensations of, 250.
+
+  Clothing, Paper, 52.
+
+  Coiffure, Arts of the, 138.
+
+  Cold Cream, 84.
+
+  Cologne, how to Make, 58.
+
+  Color, how to Procure Freshness of, 60.
+
+  Comedones, or Black Worms, how to Remove, 75.
+
+  Complexion--
+    how to Acquire a Clear, 13;
+    to Clear the, 17;
+    Preparations for Oily, 19;
+    how to Procure a Fine, 21;
+    Danger of Painting the, 69;
+    Rain-water as a Bath for the, 71;
+    Best Wash for the, 74;
+    Cure for Bad Effects of Sun and Wind on the, 80;
+    the Complexion Ruined by Fumes of Medicine, 85;
+    Iris Hues of the, 92;
+    what Complexion is the Sign of, 96:
+    Early Walks Improve the, 97;
+    Effect of Sunshine on the, 98;
+    Complexions Improved by Taking Sulphur Vapor-Baths, 130;
+    about Complexions, 192;
+    Complexion gives Trouble to Full-blooded Girls, 193;
+    Pure Blood Makes a Good, 199;
+    how to Dress with a Dull, 215;
+    Girls’ Complexions, 231;
+    Trouble with the Complexion in Cold Weather, 238;
+    how to Impart a Brilliant, 245;
+    the, 267.
+
+  Composers, a Nervous Opinion of, 248.
+
+  Congestions, Vapor-Bath Good for, 170.
+
+  Cooking, Proper, 99.
+
+  Corns--
+    Loose Shoes the Cause of, 190;
+    Soft, 191;
+    Remedies for, 191.
+
+  Corpulence, Danger of, 182.
+
+  Corpulency, Trials of, 177;
+    Turkish Baths for, 178.
+
+  Corsets--
+    about, 105;
+    Girdles more Needed than, 105;
+    Singing Scales with Corsets off, 232;
+    the Best, 233.
+
+  Cosmetic--
+    Artist, 87;
+    Gloves, 89, 245;
+    Cosmetic, 140;
+    Sultana’s, 144;
+    Milk of Roses as a, 153;
+    Cosmetics sometimes play Tricks, 194.
+
+  Crimping--
+    the Art of, 83;
+    does not Injure the Hair, 258;
+    Crimping-pins, 259;
+    Rubber Crimping-pins, 260.
+
+  Curl the Hair, how to, 84;
+    Curling Fluid, 28;
+    Curling-irons, 259.
+
+  Custom, 98.
+
+  Cuts, 80.
+
+
+  Dancers Eat, how, 102.
+
+  Dancing, 243.
+
+  Daughter’s Dressing, a Mother should Inspect her, 226.
+
+  Dawn, Bleached by the, 97.
+
+  Dentifrice--
+    Delicate, 57;
+    Standard, 143.
+
+  Depilatories, 32;
+    Cautions about, 128, 129.
+
+  Devices of Uneasy Age, 212.
+
+  Devonshire, Duchess of, 149.
+
+  Diet--
+    for Persons with Hepatic Spots, 173;
+    for Stout People, 180;
+    for Girls, 228.
+
+  Digestion, Food for Weak, 14.
+
+  Diseases--
+    Chilliness is a Symptom of, 51;
+    Eruptive, 80.
+
+  Dress--
+    how to, 219;
+    Poor Taste in, 220;
+    for Girls, 228;
+    for Flat Figures, 234.
+
+  Dresses for Girls, 233.
+
+  Dressing on Two Hundred a Year, 215.
+
+  Drinks--
+    Cooling, 20;
+    Summer, 92, 93.
+
+  Drowsy, go to Bed when you feel, 255.
+
+  Dwellings, about our, 209.
+
+  Dye--
+    a Harmless, 91;
+    how to Apply, 91;
+    French, 91;
+    Persian Blue-black, 270;
+    for White Eyebrows, 273.
+
+  Dyes--
+    for the Hair, 29;
+    for the Eyelashes and Eyebrows, 30;
+    for Theatricals, 34;
+    Chloride of Gold, 271;
+    Transient, 273.
+
+  Dyspepsia, Jealous Women have, 254.
+
+
+  Eat, how to, 102.
+
+  “Eau Angelique,” 157.
+
+  Editors, Sensations of, 250.
+
+  Eliot, George, on Complexions, 73.
+
+  Emotion, Training of, 151.
+
+  Enamel, Baking, 145.
+
+  Enigma of Love, the, 147.
+
+  Exercise--
+    to Develop the Arms, 231;
+    for Girls, 232;
+    Out-door, 251.
+
+  Expression is the Sign of, what, 95.
+
+  Eyebrows--
+    how to Grow, 90;
+    a Dye for White, 273.
+
+  Eyelashes and Eyebrows--
+    Dyeing the, 30;
+    Washes for, 34;
+    Trimmed and Brushed, 88;
+    how to Grow, 91.
+
+  Eyes Bright, Eating Sugar with Cologne on Makes the, 245.
+
+  Eyes, Dark, 122.
+
+
+  Face--
+    Means of Softening the, 19;
+    Making-up the, 61;
+    Compositions for the, 73;
+    Olive-oil and Tar for the, 120;
+    a Preparation for Whitening the, 145;
+    Pastes and Poultices for the, 172.
+
+  Faces--
+    Good for Irritable, 120;
+    Bleaching, 198;
+    Dull, Thin, 218;
+    School-girls’ Flushed, 243.
+
+  Faults, Common, 96.
+
+  Feelings, never Talk of a Girl’s, before Her, 230.
+
+  Feet--
+    Care of the, 40, 162;
+    Position of, when Standing, 40;
+    how to Keep the Feet Elastic, 42;
+    Painful Swelling of, 42;
+    how to Bathe the, 162;
+    Oil for the, 163.
+
+  Figure--
+    Erectness of the, 38;
+    the Proper Carriage of the, when Walking, 42;
+    what a Fine Figure must be, 225;
+    Care of the, after Nursing, 236.
+
+  Figures, Flat, 234.
+
+  Fine Arts, School of, 110.
+
+  Finger Thimbles, 124.
+
+  Finger-tips, Coloring of the, 66.
+
+  Flesh--
+    how to Reduce, 93;
+    Banting System for Reducing, 175;
+    Losing Flesh at the Rate of a Pound a Week, 182.
+
+  Folks, Older, to Join with the Children, 249.
+
+  Food--
+    for Weak Digestion, 14;
+    Brain-work takes, 102;
+    about our, 209.
+
+  Form--
+    Renovating the Outward, 12;
+    Beauty in the Human, 86.
+
+  Freckles--
+    Golden, 78;
+    how to Remove, 79.
+
+  Freckle Wash, 114.
+
+  French Dye, 91.
+
+  Frizzing the Hair, 259.
+
+  Frizzing-tongs, 259.
+
+
+  Gargle for the Mouth, 157.
+
+  Generation, a Low-toned, 247.
+
+  Girdle, a Linen, 105.
+
+  Girdles more Needed than Corsets, 105.
+
+  Girls--
+    Physical Education of, 224;
+    when Girls are Awkward, 227;
+    Bathing for, 227;
+    Diet for, 228;
+    Dress for, 228;
+    Exercise for, 232;
+    Care of Young, 235;
+    Delicacy due Young, 235.
+
+  Gloves, Cosmetic, 89;
+    Close-fitting, 243.
+
+  Grace--
+    the Secret of, 38;
+    how to Inspire a Girl with, 226;
+    in Women, Sign of, 234.
+
+  Gums, a Recipe for Diseased, 160.
+
+
+  Hair--
+    Black, how to Dye, 13;
+    Care of the, 22;
+    how to Cultivate Children’s, 23;
+    Washes, 24;
+    Means of Obtaining Luxuriant, 26;
+    when to Cut, 26;
+    German Method of Treating the, 27;
+    Curling Fluid for the, 28;
+    Oil for the, 28;
+    Dyes, 29, 189;
+    how to Treat Red, 31;
+    Superfluous, 32;
+    Growth of, 33;
+    how to Brush the, 33;
+    Hair Powders, 67;
+    to Darken the, 68;
+    how to make Blonde, 68;
+    Fashionable Gray, 82;
+    Preparation for Preventing the Sea-air from Turning the Hair
+      Gray, 82;
+    Preparation for Restoring the Color of the, 82;
+    how to keep Hair Crimped or Curled, 83;
+    how to Curl the, 84;
+    Bather, 87;
+    Dressers, Amateur, 89;
+    a Wash to Stimulate the Growth of, 90;
+    Bleaching, 121, 263;
+    Removal of Hair on the Face, 125;
+    Removal of Superfluous, 125;
+    a Paste for Removing Hairs from the Face, 127;
+    Countries where Women have the Finest, 132;
+    Effect of the Sun on the, 138;
+    Burdock Wash for the, 186;
+    how to keep, from Coming Out, 187;
+    how to Restore Color to the, 188;
+    Dye, Cheapest and most Harmless, 189;
+    Restorer, Sperm-oil a, 189;
+    Hay-colored, 221;
+    how to Dress the, 221;
+    False, 257;
+    Changing the Color of the, 258;
+    Crimping does not Injure the, 258;
+    Light, should be Crimped, 258;
+    Dead, should be Pulled Out by the Roots, 258;
+    Frizzing the, 259;
+    Hair-pins, Blonde, 261;
+    Iron Hair-pins Hurt the Head, 261;
+    Cause of Light, 262;
+    what Colors, 262;
+    Foxy, 265;
+    how to Change Red and Flaxen, 271.
+
+  Hands, how to Soften the, 111, 243;
+    how to Whiten the, 112;
+    Bran Mittens for Whitening the, 172;
+    how to Secure Good, for Girls, 231;
+    Trouble with the, in Cold Weather, 238;
+    School-girls’ Flushed, 243;
+    for Removing Vegetable Stains from the, 244.
+
+  Harvey, Mr. William, 180;
+    Honors to Dr., 184.
+
+  Health, Cleanliness means, 164.
+
+  Heart Dependent on the Body, the, 167.
+
+  Hepatic Spots, Remedies for, 173.
+
+  High Living, Effects of, 125.
+
+  Homely Women, Hope for, 95.
+
+  Hours of Solitude, Reserve our, 149.
+
+  Hugo says, what Victor, 109.
+
+  Humors to the Surface, Drawing, 196.
+
+
+  Infant, do not Wash an, with Cheap Soap, 161.
+
+  Ink or Vegetable Stains, how to Remove, 112.
+
+  Insulators, Patent, 261.
+
+  Iris, Florentine, 138.
+
+  Italian Ladies, Habit of, 75.
+
+
+  Joints, to Restore Suppleness to the, 153.
+
+
+  Lacing, Arts of, 136.
+
+  Leaves are Full of Joy, 165.
+
+  Lecturers Eat, how, 102.
+
+  Linen, Écru, and White Nansook, 217.
+
+  Lip-Salve, 114.
+
+  Lips, Color for the, 67.
+
+  Looks, Woman’s, 247.
+
+  Love--
+    the Enigma of, 147;
+    the Love of Man, 147;
+    to Love and be Loved, 147;
+    Power of, over Man, 147;
+    Effect of, on Women, 148;
+    Miracle of, 148.
+
+
+  Madness, Brief, 249.
+
+  Magnificent, Easier to be, than Clean, 168.
+
+  “Making-up,” the Secrets of, 244.
+
+  Malmaison, Josephine of, 150.
+
+  Man Admires in Woman, what, 225.
+
+  Manners, Education in, 35.
+
+  Medicines for Women, the Great--Sunshine, Music, Work, and Sleep, 256.
+
+  Milk of Roses, 66, 153.
+
+  Mirrors, Advantages of Lining Rooms with, 221.
+
+  Moles, 33.
+
+  Montagu, Lady Mary, 75.
+
+  Montez, Lola, Recipe of, 154.
+
+  Mother, a, should Inspect her Daughter’s Dressing, 226.
+
+  Mothers--
+    a Word to, 109;
+    Prescription for Feeble, 211.
+
+  Mouth, Gargle for the, 157.
+
+  Murray’s Book, Lines from, 196.
+
+  Music--
+    Influence of, 148;
+    Women should Study, 252.
+
+  Musquito Bites, 81.
+
+
+  Nails--
+    Polishing the, 88;
+    how to give a Fine Color to the, 112;
+    Ingrowing, 163.
+
+  Nansook, White, 212.
+
+  Neck, a Preparation for Whitening the, 145.
+
+  Needle, how to hold a, Gracefully, 137.
+
+  Neighbors, Pulling our, to Pieces, 96.
+
+  Nerves, Woman’s, 247.
+
+  Nervous Prostration, Cure for, 13;
+    Nervous and Sanguine People, Diet for, 15.
+
+  Nets _vs._ Night-Caps, 25.
+
+  Neuralgia, Sulphur Vapor-Bath for, 130, 170.
+
+  Nose, Redness of the, 244.
+
+  Nose-Machine, a, 123.
+
+  Nursing, Care of the Figure after, 236.
+
+
+  Oil--
+    for the Hair, 28;
+    of Mace, 187.
+
+  Oils, Sweet, 153.
+
+  Ointment, Olive, 195.
+
+  Olive-Oil and Tar for the Face, 120.
+
+  Out-door Exercise, 251.
+
+
+  Padding, against, 233.
+
+  Paint and Powder, 59.
+
+  Painting the Complexion, Danger of, 69.
+
+  Paleness, Northern and Southern, 78.
+
+  Pallor, Shining, 77.
+
+  Paper as a Preventative against Chilliness, 52.
+
+  Parks and Balconies, in, 98.
+
+  Parties, Preparing for, 238.
+
+  Passions, how to Quiet our, 20.
+
+  Paste--
+    for Shoulders and Arms, 90;
+    for Removing Hairs from the Face, 127;
+    for Whitening the Arms, 128;
+    of Venus, 139;
+    Sulphur, 263.
+
+  Pastilles, Gray, for Purifying the Breath, 156.
+
+  Pàte, Bazin’s, 160.
+
+  Perfume--
+    of the Presence, 49;
+    how Arabian Women Perfume themselves, 131;
+    Perfumes, 141;
+    for the Body, 142;
+    Lost, 143;
+    of Spring, 149;
+    of the Bath, 159.
+
+  Perspiration--
+    Preparation for Profuse, 93;
+    Cure for Odor of the, 159;
+    Dangers Resulting from Suddenly Checking, 203.
+
+  Petrarch’s Laura, 88.
+
+  Physical Culture Urgent, 167.
+
+  Physical Education of Girls, 224.
+
+  Piano, Practice at the, 229.
+
+  Pimples--
+    a Recipe to Remove, 74;
+    are Disease, 239.
+
+  Pimple-Wash, 114.
+
+  Pomades, 25;
+    Southernwood, 29;
+    Almond, 84;
+    Mexican, 141.
+
+  Powder, 62;
+    Chalk, 63;
+    Cascarilla, 74, 242;
+    Bathing, 94.
+
+  Powder and Paint, 59.
+
+  Preparation for Profuse Perspiration, 93.
+
+  Presence, Perfume of the, 49.
+
+  Prime, Woman’s, 11.
+
+  Principals of Schools, a Word to, 109.
+
+  Prophylactic Fluid, 241.
+
+  Prostration, Cure for Nervous, 13.
+
+
+  Queen of England, the, uses Distilled Water for her Toilet, 169.
+
+
+  Races--
+    Grace of the Latin, 37;
+    Antique, 226.
+
+  Récamier’s Training, 70.
+
+  Recipes--
+    for Warm Days, 92;
+    Perfume, 139, 140, 141, 142.
+
+  Rheumatism, Good for, 170.
+
+  Rooms, Advantages of Lining, with Mirrors, 221.
+
+  Roses, Milk of, 66.
+
+  Rouge--
+    Tints of, 64;
+    Devoux French, 66.
+
+  Rusma, Oriental, 138.
+
+
+  Sallowness, how to Remove, 92.
+
+  Salve--
+    Lip, 114;
+    Toilet, 114.
+
+  Scalp, Preparations for Dry, 25.
+
+  Scrofulous Affections, Good for, 201.
+
+  Sea-Baths, a Substitute for, 55.
+
+  Shoe-Lining, 164.
+
+  Shoes, Tight, 41.
+
+  Shoulder--
+    Braces, 38;
+    how to Acquire Sloping Shoulders, 40;
+    a Paste for Arms and Shoulders, 90;
+    Device for Stiff Shoulders, 103.
+
+  Singers and Students, Diet for, 15;
+    how Singers Eat, 102;
+    Training of, 151;
+    Singing Scales with Corsets off, 232;
+    Singing, 251.
+
+  Situation, Accepting the, 214.
+
+  Skin--
+    Irritations of the, 20;
+    Prescription for the, 79;
+    Cure for Rough Skins from Yachting, 79;
+    Rough, 80;
+    Summer Irritations of the, 81;
+    Inflammation of the, 85;
+    for Improving the, 113;
+    how to Prolong the Freshness of the, 152;
+    Bran Cleanses the, 171;
+    a Recipe for Sunburned and Freckled, 192;
+    Cause of Rough, 193;
+    Effect of Consumption on the, 195.
+
+  Sleep--
+    the Remedy for Temper, 254;
+    Number of Hours to, 254;
+    People who Need Much, 255.
+
+  Soaps--
+    Quality of, 160;
+    do not use Cheap, 161;
+    Carbolic, 238.
+
+  Solitude, Reserve our Hours of, 149.
+
+  Southern Women, Carriage of, 44.
+
+  Southernwood Pomade, 29.
+
+  Spirits, how to Obtain Unfailing, 101.
+
+  Stains, how to Remove Ink or Vegetable, 112.
+
+  Still, a Small, 169.
+
+  Stippled Skin, Cure for, 18.
+
+  Stockings, how Often to Change, 163.
+
+  Stomach, to Maintain a Healthy Condition of the, 18.
+
+  Stout and Thin People, Food for, 16;
+    a Hint to Stout People, 93;
+    why People Grow Stout, 102.
+
+  Study, a Veto on Close, 229.
+
+  Superfluous Hair, 32.
+
+  Surgeon, a Wise, 180.
+
+  Swimming-School, Nervous Women should go to, 251.
+
+  Switches, Freshening, 265.
+
+
+  Tan-Wash, 114.
+
+  Tar, 195.
+
+  Tea, People who Drink Strong, 248.
+
+  Teeth--
+    for Decaying, 56;
+    Cleansing of the, 57;
+    Wash for the, 143.
+
+  Temper, how to Soothe the, 209;
+    Sleep the Remedy for, 254;
+    Heathen Tempers a Sign of Wrong Health, 254.
+
+  Theatricals, Dyes for, 34.
+
+  Thin and Stout People, Food for, 16.
+
+  Tint, a Brown, 91.
+
+  Tobacco in the Breath, Remedy for, 156.
+
+  Toilet--
+    Water, 58, 140;
+    Antique Toilet Arts, 60;
+    the Toilet a Profession, 87;
+    Influence of a Luxurious, 88;
+    Luxury of the, 88;
+    Artistic at the, 116;
+    Cares of the, 136;
+    Craft of the, 152;
+    Toilet Waters and Pastes, 161;
+    Distilled Water for the, 169;
+    Plain Women and Agreeable, 215.
+
+  Toothache, Recipe for the, 155.
+
+  Tooth-Wash, 158.
+
+  Towels, Bath, 54.
+
+  Training, Récamier’s, 70.
+
+  Tweezers, Roman, 126.
+
+  Typhoid Fever sometimes Caused by High Living, 126.
+
+
+  Ulcers, 80.
+
+  Unfeminine Traits, 108.
+
+
+  Vanities, Different, 109.
+
+  Vestris, Madame, 152.
+
+  Vitriol, Wash of, 76.
+
+
+  Wakefulness a Sign of Ill-Health, 255.
+
+  Walking in Relation to Health, 46.
+
+  Warm Days, Recipes for, 92.
+
+  Wash--
+    of Vitriol, 76;
+    to Stimulate the Growth of Hair, 90;
+    a Sand, 111;
+    for Tan, Freckles, Pimples, and Blotches, 114;
+    for Teeth or Hands, 143;
+    for Sunburned Skin, 242;
+    Glycerine, 242.
+
+  Water--
+    Toilet, 58, 140;
+    Distilling 168;
+    Distilled Water for the Toilet, 169.
+
+  Weak, how the, should Work, 253.
+
+  Wife, a Senator’s, 218.
+
+  Wigs, Blonde, for Theatricals, 68;
+    Wigs and Chignons, Changing, 257.
+
+  Willis, N. P., on Beauty, 48.
+
+  Woman--
+    her Business to be Beautiful, 9;
+    Woman’s Artists, 87, 88;
+    a Healthy Woman, 107;
+    the Loveliest Woman of France, 150;
+    Trials of a Plain, 185;
+    how a Homely Woman can make Herself Agreeable, 215;
+    what Man Admires in a, 225;
+    Woman’s Value in the World, 225;
+    a Woman’s Rule, 240;
+    Woman’s Looks and Nerves, 247.
+
+  Women--
+    Carriage of Southern, 44;
+    Hope for Homely, 95;
+    Transformation of Homely Women into Charming Beings, 95;
+    Sorrows of Ugly, 110;
+    Effect of Being in Love on, 148;
+    at and after Thirty, 150;
+    Counsel to Women of Thirty, 115;
+    Porcelain, 196;
+    what is to be Done with Weak, 196;
+    Plain Women and Agreeable Toilets, 215;
+    Sensations of Writing, 250;
+    Nervous Women should go to Swimming-School, 251;
+    why Women should Study Music, 252;
+    Jealous Women have Dyspepsia, 254;
+    why Women Need more Sleep than Men, 256;
+    the Secret of Content for most, 257.
+
+  Work--
+    a Nervous Person’s, is Fuss, 248;
+    how the Weak should, 253;
+    well done the Easiest, 253.
+
+  Worms--
+    Black, or Comedones, how to Remove, 75;
+    Flesh, 239.
+
+  Wrinkles--
+    a Kind of Varnish for, 75;
+    how to Ward off, 152;
+    Bread Paste and Court-Plaster to Conceal, 213.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note
+
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
+Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
+
+Page number references in the index are as published in the original
+publication and have not been checked for accuracy in this eBook.
+
+Other spelling has also been retained as originally published except
+for the changes below.
+
+  Page 93:  “of sassafras drank”          “of sassafras drunk”
+  Page 121: “for _trés blondes_”          “for _très blondes_”
+  Page 125: “CHAPTER XI .”                “CHAPTER XII.”
+  Page 192: “A southern lady”             “A Southern lady”
+  Page 217: “its semi-tranparency”        “its semi-transparency”
+  Page 277: “Washes for,   ;”             “Washes for, 34;”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75279 ***