Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/33

 *ing sundry discrepancies. The matter is not to be understood too rigidly. These rules are intended to apply to a certain age and a certain style of beauty, and though true as rules, like all rules, they permit exceptions and suffer limited variations.

HOW TO PERFECT THE FIGURE.

Who would have a perfect form cannot begin too early. Nay, the mother should commence the physical education of the child long before its birth. Thus did the dames of ancient Greece who gave the world a race unmatched for beauty in all history.

So, too, during the period of nursing the careful mother will see to it that her child has abundance of good wholesome food, for nothing so certainly produces deformity as ill-nourishment. She will take care that the infant does not lie more frequently on one side than the other, for this will make it "lopsided;" that it is changed from arm to arm in nursing and carrying for the same reason; that it does not walk too soon, lest it become bandy-legged; that it does not wear tight clothing or bandages, as these will readily press its tender flesh and yielding bones into uncouth shapes.

Another period of life, where it is of the greatest importance that sedulous and intelligent care should guard over the child, is when she is passing through that momentous change which transforms the girl into the woman.