Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/206

 ingale, or of forgetfulness, or of the morning mist, to that of the wistaria or the crescent moon. Indian ink was used to eke out shapes which could not be completed by means of the natural hair alone. When a woman married, however, these vanities passed out of her life; she blackened her teeth and shaved her eyebrows. Rouging the cheeks, gilding a portion of the under lip, and imparting a blush to the nails were among the cares of the toilet, and a writer at the end of the seventeenth century enumerated sixteen articles required by a lady for making up her face and coiffure alone,—a number which increased to twenty by the middle of the eighteenth century. Simultaneously with these changes the fashionable lady lengthened her sleeves till they fell far below the knee, and suspended from them a tiny bell which tinkled as she walked. In her girdle she carried a bag of perfume as well as a little looking-glass, a comb, some rouge and some face powder, and whenever a rude air of heaven had assailed her, she seized the first tranquil moment to restore the symmetry of her coiffure and the graces of her face. It had been her strict rule never to allow any portion of the body to be seen as she walked abroad, her head enveloped in a species of veil and an attendant holding a long umbrella over her. But now when the Phrynes of the city began to walk without socks and to expose their ankles, respectable ladies followed their example, and did not hesitate to borrow