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with a composition of fine emery-powder and cinnabar, using an instrument such as one finds in the manicure boxes (chamoisskin backed with wood); then the hands are ready for ultimate refinement.

You can use large, soft, leather gloves three or four sizes too large. Rip them open and spread the inside with one of the following preparations. The simplest, and therefore the least troublesome to make, are the three following ones:

1. Ground barley, the white of an egg, a teaspoonful of
glycerin, and 1 ounce of honey.

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After boiling these together, remove them from the fire before

adding

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1 gill.

Spirits of wine,
Ambergris, or some other perfume, to an amount to suit the
taste, always being on your guard not to scent things
too highly.

3. Refined pine-tar, .

Olive-oil,

1 teaspoonful.

1 pint.

Melt in a water-bath, scenting with rose-water or some other perfume. This is a preparation which does not spoil.

The following two preparations, for use with cosmetic

gloves, are slightly more elaborate :

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Melt the wax in a water-bath, and add the myrrh to it while it is hot. After beating them up together, add the honey and rose-water. Beat all up, and add glycerin by the teaspoonful until you secure a paste which will spread nicely.

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Occasionally unsightly white spots appear on the nailsurface. These can generally be removed by the following preparation, put on at night, and the residue removed the next morning with some little oily substance, such as butter, cream, or other things to be found in every household,-some refined pitch, with a little myrrh, and, after mixing them together, lay the mixture over the nails for the night.

There are certain substances so powerful in their action on the root of the nail as to injure its constitution for a long time following frequent contact with them, perhaps in some cases permanently. We had, several years ago, an experience of this kind in connection with using sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) for certain experiments which we were making with galvanic batteries charged with the acid dissolved in water. The nails became ridged, and some of their individual cells raised above the general surface, and it was not until several years had passed that these effects ceased to be visible. Deceived by a name, persons often innocently use an article of which they would be very wary if they only knew of its real character through the name with which they are familiar. Vitriol has a much worse significance to the mind of the laity than has sulphuric acid; so also they have of aqua fortis a dread which they do not always feel in the case of nitric acid. A case of this kind came not long ago to our notice, where a lady, following out a recipe for cleaning marble, which she had happened upon in some book, bought quite largely of what she did not think of as a particularly dangerous liquid, and was shortly afterward horrified at learning that she had been buying aqua fortis under the (to her) innocent title of nitric acid, an article which she then recognized as most undesirable to have about a nursery.

17

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FEET.

portion of the body is more imposed upon than is the.. civilized foot. It alone, including in lesser degree, because numerically much fewer, the waists of some silly women who have no appreciation of what in feminine attributes pleases the eye of man, leads a life of durance vile and wretchedness that degrade and transmit evidence of previous servile condition to posterity. We do not, as that expression implies, place the two kinds of bondage in the same category as to degree of iniquity. We cite the two cases together, merely as representing the only two in which the human body is in civilization constrained to its manifest injury and degradation. The gartering of some women below, instead of above, the knee is not a hygienic nor a beautifying mode of securing the stocking, for it impedes circulation in the part and vulgarizes the contour of the calf of the leg; but that practice is a trifle, not in comparison worth mentioning.

An excessively small waist may be a sign of maidenhood, but suggests sexual deficiency, and in lessening sexual attraction defeats the end of its constriction. Ex pede Herculem, from a mere fragment we can judge of the whole person, says the Latin proverb, and no woman with a wasp-waist will ever persuade a man that it can merge into the grand contours of bosom and fine hips, any more than he can think of a rill as directly related to the ocean. Similarly we may say of the feet, that they, as well as the hands, symbolize the whole person. Their undue constraint results in destroying their natural accord with the person, and at the same time in lessening grace through restricted liberty of movement. There are men who lace, but

very few, and men who wear tight boots, but comparatively very few. It is civilized woman, of not the highest type of the civilization by which she is surrounded, who is the sinner in these respects.

We Americans are the greatest inventors of the world. Even Dickens, who was no lover of us nationally, although fond of our ducats, conceded that only Americans had discovered what to do with the small of the back," they sit on it," he said. But, while we are the greatest inventors of the world, we are also the most servile imitators. Thousands of men, while pretending politically to look down upon the Britisher, anxiously copy his speech, his accent, and clothes. The fair sex, to a woman, without any similar pretense, frankly yields allegiance to Parisian rule in dress. It is not the Britisher, however, who has changed within a decade or two, his conceit pointing as steadily as ever to himself, as points the needle to the pole; nor the French either, whose self-satisfaction in supremacy within their own domain could not well be less than it is as undisputed. But, if we can be so original as we have proved ourselves, why cannot we stand in all respects more confidently alone? Granting the claims of fashion, yet there is a point where reason would seem to be more capable than it proves to be in dealing with fashion's follies in the interest even of the object of fashion,— to increase attraction. Has it never struck American women who have been addicted to wearing the most damaging of French shoes, in which a Parisian never thinks of walking, but reserves for the house or carriage, that the native-born type to which they belong is so singularly endowed with small hands and feet, in some parts of country verging on the danger-line of beauty, which we have indeed seen overpassed, that they have no need of affecting this elegance as if they had it not? If this be true, as can be proved by statistics, what an absurdity it is for them to pinch and screw their feet into shoes too small, when all they

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