.

its color may be due to striation and corrugation of the surface, as well as to the presence in the skin of the numerous thin plates, differing in constitution, of which we have already spoken. Incidentally, it will also become evident why the skin is so luminous, and therefore how a complexion can be so brilliant as to justify the use of the term "dazzling."

Under the magnifying power of fifty diameters there is no penetration of sight below the surface. We see merely the immediate surface of the horny layer of the scarf-skin. Imagine a piece of ice about an inch in thickness, not appearing as transparent nor even as translucent, because having a backing to it, but as seen entirely by reflected light; and this piece of ice to be broken up into facets without dislodgment of them, leaving them with slightly defined outlines, and placed at slightly different angles with reference to the general surface. This is the general appearance of the skin as seen magnified fifty times, but only the general appearance of it under those circumstances. To convey a true conception of it, we must now speak of the special effects of light as seen reflected from the skin as thus magnified. In many places, particularly on the crests and ridges formed by the slightly angular position of the facets with reference to each other, which facets are, of course, in the case of the skin, the scales of the scarf-skin, the effect of the reflected light is more intense than can be realized by likening it to the glinting of broken and pulverized ice. The light on the crests and ridges between the facets is comparable in lustre only to polished silver highly illuminated. These facets, being the horny layer of the scarf skin, are the surface which receives light into the skin, so that the light must, even at its entrance, be subjected to refraction. Additionally, the striation of the horny layer at the junctions of the scales, and the corrugations produced by their angular position with reference to each other, must be in themselves productive of color.

The outermost layer of the skin being formed, as described, of silvery-white facets, is of the best possible constitution to reflect light. We see best by reflected light when the light is scattered. A plate-glass mirror can be so placed as not to be visible, as it sometimes is in the tricks of magicians on the stage. If the glass of which the mirror is made were crushed to fragments, it would instantly become visible, because the light falling upon the glass would be scattered. Just so, polished facets, such as have been described, scatter light in all directions. The complexion, therefore, is summed up in the natural fineness, color, and translucency of the skin of the face, as modified by the laws of light and their combined effects reflected to the eye by the bright outside surface of the skin. Hence, we perceive how appropriate are our terms for a complexion such as Madame Récamier's, brilliant, radiant, dazzling, the whole effect startling, and how impossible it is by artifice to improve upon nature, to do more than mask with an imperfection another imperfection, which may sometimes not be the greater.

When an artificer in cosmetics shall be able to change an ordinary skin to one fine in texture, color, translucency, and brightness, then, and not till then, can he make a fine complexion. If complexion were derived from a dense, mât surface, art would be adequate to tint it so as to look like nature. But, as complexion is the result of the combination of natural qualities,— fineness, color, translucency,-modified by the affluence and effluence of light acting under divine law, it is impossible successfully to imitate its effects. Carried to the extreme, the result of the attempt is ghastly. Alphonse Daudet, in his "Froment Jeune et Risler Ainé," vividly depicts, on their way to the races at Longchamps, those artificial blondes whom the Third French Empire produced. "Carriages," he says, "as they passed, grazed, driven by women with painted faces squeezed into narrow veils, motionless, holding their whips upright with the pose of

dolls, nothing alive about them but their charcoaled eyes fixed on the horses' heads." This is the cosmetic art become Satanic, and yet it has appeared to some extent even in this virgin land. What can be seductive about it, except to the lowest of men, and to them only in default of better exemplars of the fair sex, it were hard to say. Nothing living so much resembles the whited sepulchre, where dead men's bones lie within. The fashion is not of the earth earthy, but of the devil devilish. It does not suggest life, but death,-vice in its last agony of body and mind.

WE

CHAPTER XV.

THE BATH AS PROMOTIVE OF HEALTH AND BEAUTY.

E may rest assured, judging by the present general tendencies of mankind, that, although bathing must be of the highest antiquity, it was resorted to of old, as well as now, by the multitude only for the sake of its directly pleasurable effects, instead of from motives of cleanliness and promotion of good physical condition and beauty. As in duty bound, in this era of demand for reasons for all assertions, we proceed to give those for the faith within us, as shown by our conclusion.

The physician is, of all men living, the one who has most to do with the literally naked facts in the case before us. He it is who is called upon to make physical examination of applicants for enlistment in the military service, and many others rendered necessary by accident or sudden invasion of disease, which in sum yield him on this subject ample fund of information. No such witness can conscientiously say that more than a fraction of the cases so presenting themselves evidence due regard for the social and hygienic demands of extreme nicety of person. He knows that examinations for enlistment are generally followed by grateful ventilation of the rooms where they have been held. Such, however, is the effect of military instruction in personal habits, and of military discipline in the promotion of selfrespect, that in the vast majority of cases they result in permanent change in men previously negligent of cleanliness. He has similar experience, through the fact that he is often summoned to go to the assistance of persons who have met with some serious accident, or who, without time for adequate preparation, perhaps in dense ignorance of their shortcomings in the matter of neatness, are suddenly compelled to seek him for