Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/162

 hands, for the fashion of wearing gloves in full dress was first introduced in England by Anne Boleyn, the unfortunate queen of Henry the Eighth. They were not at all popular at first, and the great ladies of the court, jealous that the country girl become a queen should thus outstrip them in the arts of beauty, circulated the report that she had six fingers, and took this mode of concealing the deformity.

In later days the fops transcended the belles in their mania for this luxury. Beau Brummell and the Count d'Orsay each used to wear six different pairs daily, and never put on the same pair twice.

Softness and whiteness of the hands are prized by every beauty, and many a one who don't pretend to be a beauty. It is supposed to be something difficult to attain. Not at all. In the first place, do not expose them to the wind and sun too freely. Never employ strong soaps, or hard water.

"But if the water is hard?"

Put a teaspoonful of powdered borax in the basin.

"And if we have no borax? A lady don't carry a drug-store with her on her travels."

Don't wash the hands. It is as a rule superfluous, in fact an injury, from a cosmetic point of view, this constant moistening the skin.

The Baron Alibert was some years since the most celebrated of all the Parisian surgeons for treating diseases of the skin. One day a lady said to him:—