Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/144

 teeth with cigar ashes, or causing the gums to bleed with the tooth-pick or brush, or rubbing them with cream of tartar or any other acid. But they may, if they please, in the early summer crush a ripe strawberry around the teeth before retiring, and let the pulp remain there during the night. It is a marvellous secret for giving the enamel a lustrous hue, and the breath a richly fruity aroma, comparable to the zephyr wafted from some Isle of Eden in a summer sea. A lotion of permanganate of potash, which is esteemed very highly in Europe, we shall mention later, when we come to speak of offensive breath, and how to prevent it.

A curious fact in physiology will make an appropriate close to this section. It has, moreover, a direct connection with the beauty of the teeth. Though they have no real circulation, their color is found to change with the changes in the health. In bilious people they become yellow; in scrofulous and consumptive patients they show occasionally an unnaturally pearly and translucent whiteness. It is absurd, therefore, for all to wish to have teeth similar to the most admired models.

THE VOICE.

What a touch of nature is that where Lear, bending with unfathomable sorrow in his aged eyes over Cordelia's body, thinks he hears some half-whispered