Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/328

 present, when seen from in front, a general, oval outline from above downward. This can be greatly aided by the beard. If the face is round, the beard on the chin should be cultivated; if long and thin, then side-whiskers are appropriate. A person with a flat, broad nose should never wear a moustache, nor should one with a very short and thin upper lip, as in the former case it gives a brutish, in the latter an ignoble aspect to the features. Still less should a person with retreating forehead or chin cultivate this style of beard, as it gives the profile a yet more unfavorable outline.

A bald-headed man should not wear a heavy beard, as the contrast is ludicrous. A full beard, however natural it is, is not suitable to him who has but a sparse, hungry, and irregular growth on his face, nor to him whose beard sprouts out crooked, bristly, and harsh. Unfortunately, a face scarred with smallpox hardly ever can support a fine beard. The hair bulbs seem never to recover their strength after that disease. No style of beard should be worn which is strange, eccentric, or vulgar. This is a precept singularly disregarded in "the best society" (bless us). But this is but another proof (if we needed another) that the best society often takes snobbery for good taste. For example, long tails to the beard or whiskers, fantastic curls to the ends of the hair, fantastic shapes to the patches of hair allowed to grow, or immense length and size of any portion of the beard, are all quite as foreign