Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/184

 do not affect the true skin at all. Here is matter for wholesale consolation. For where is the lady who has not on some part one or a dozen of these blemishes she fain would get rid of? In point of looks, it is the scarf-skin much more than the true skin which concerns us, for it is this outer and ever visible layer which is most frequently to blame in unhandsome complexions.

With a becoming sense, therefore, of the weighty matters we are about to handle, we shall pass in review all the means which are useful in retaining and defending against the envious assaults of Time, the clear and brilliant complexion of youth, that

"Beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand lays on."

Nor will our task end here. He is unworthy the name of physician, who concerns himself only about those who are whole. We shall go further, and turning to those whom the old fellow with hour-glass and sickle has already worsted, we shall ransack for their sakes the magazine of art for means to repair, or if repairing is out of the question, then to conceal, the damage they have sustained in the conflict of years. For if it is well for age to take lessons from the buoyant spirits and active mind of youth, may it not with equal propriety strive for the bright eye and healthful glow? The imitation is not what repels us; it is the failure in the attempt at imitation.