Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/217

 course to the most frequent ablutions. In the morning, in the evening, and whenever chagrin had loosened her tears, every few hours she bathed her face, and dusted it by throwing over it a light cloud of rice-powder."

We have already spoken a word in favor of powder after ablutions, apropos of Anne Boleyn. It should be kept for this purpose in a fine gauze bag, with which the surface can be lightly tapped, or the swan's-down brush may be chosen. After thus depositing on the surface a thin film, all loose particles should be gently brushed away. An invisible stratum will then remain, protecting the skin from noxious influences.

But everything depends on having a powder which will itself be perfectly innoxious. Here, as elsewhere, we shall follow our plan of giving receipts for several quite as effective, much cheaper, and by all odds safer than many of those whose ingredients are unknown, and whose only merit is their elegant wrappers.

For ordinary toilet purposes, none is superior to that commonly used in the nursery, which is nothing but very finely-powdered starch (that from arrowroot is the best), scented with orris-root and essences. The rice powder, poudre de riz, mentioned in the extract from Dr. Veron we have just given, is very finely ground rice-meal, scented to the taste.

When there is any chafed surface on the person, in the flexures of the joints or elsewhere, one-fourth the