Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/185

 Our instructions commence with a homely theme, but an orthodox one. It is cleanliness of the person; in short

WASHING AND BATHING.

Baron Liebig says that the progress of nations in civilization can be accurately measured by the amount of soap they use. If the test were applied, we fear our country would make a poor figure. In this city of seven hundred thousand bodies there is not a single public bath. Even in "good society" (save the mark) there is not that attention to scrupulous cleanliness which there should be. More than one young lady might find a moral in the anecdote told of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. When young, this famous woman seems to have been a model of candor, if not of neatness. One day a companion ventured to suggest to her that her hands needed washing.

"My hands!" exclaimed she, "what would you say if you saw my feet?"

We rarely prophesy. But we confidently pronounce one prediction which is worth all those contained in the folios of that renowned cosmetic artist, who afterwards turned astrologist and prophet, Michael Nostradamus. It is this:—

The age of beauty will never come until every woman takes a bath every day, when she is in health.

The bath, moreover, must be in water slightly tepid,