Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/183

 "I tell you we shall certainly have the Age of Beauty, and it will come, I fear me, before the Age of Wit, or the Age of Virtue, or the Age of Happiness."

This prophecy of the venerable lifre-lofre so cheers us, that we continue our labors with a feeling as if we were the heralds sent to announce the great time coming, when there shall be no more rivalry among the belles, for they shall all be equally lovely. Mindful of his definition of beauty, we shall be very minute in what we have to say about the skin.

What is the skin?

Any doctor will answer you with alacrity, that it is the protecting cover to the exterior of the body, that it is composed of two layers, the epidermis or scarf-skin on the outside, a structure usually thin and without sensation, and the derma or true skin, a sensitive layer of fibres with minute eminences, immediately beneath the epidermis. The epidermis is composed of numerous cells. These contain the coloring matter which gives the dark hue to the brunette, and to the brown and black races of men. It is the epidermis which rises when a blister has "drawn." Blister a negro, and when the epidermis comes away, you will find the spot is white. His color, which we make such an ado about, is not even skin-deep; it is barely scarf-skin-deep.

So it is with freckles, moles, moths, and most kind of spots on the skin. They are very superficial, and