Page:Colymbia (1873).djvu/113

Rh occasioned. I read that your millinery and tailors have arrived at such a degree of perfection in their art, that they are able, with tight lacing and padding, to make the most ungainly and ill-fashioned figure assume all the appearance of perfect symmetry of form; and I further read, that any kind of complexion and colour of hair may be obtained; that false hair, false eyebrows, false eyes, false teeth, false noses, and false ears, not to mention false arms and legs, are to be had of such surprising naturalness that they cannot be detected. In short, any deceit may be practised in air, but water is incapable of lending itself to such cheats. Here everything is what it seems—our hair and our complexions, our limbs and our other organs, are all our own. Every one is as the hand of nature has fashioned him or her. I can imagine a couple of terrestrials being entrapped into mutual admiration by the beautifying arts of your tailors, milliners, hair-dressers and dealers in cosmetics. And when they got married they would find to their chagrin, that it was not one another they admired, but only clothes and wigs, padding, rouge and powder! When, on the blissful hymeneal evening, monsieur and madame came to unrobe, they would eye one another's movements with the most intense disgust, if not with astonishment. Those coal-black Hyperion curls of monsieur are removed, and a bald or grizzled head exposed to view. Madame takes out a few pins, and lo! the rich fleece of golden tresses falls to the ground. Monsieur doffs his coat and madame sees that those broad and symmetrical shoulders she so admired were only padding. Madame washes her face, and the exquisite red and white complexion changes, as if by