Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/80

 The forehead in women should be rather low and broad. This was the rule of the ancient artists. It was thought that a high forehead gives a bold or else a shrewish expression to the countenance. Nevertheless, we admire none of the "foreheads villainous low," denoting a limited or a perverse intellect. The height from the bridge of the nose should exactly equal the length of the nose.

In some persons the hair grows down upon the forehead, destroying its contour and beauty. This may be remedied by carefully removing the hairs, which are generally thin and fine, by one of the depilatories to be mentioned hereafter. Charlotte Bremer, in her Life of her sister, Frederica Bremer, relates that this was one of the girlish troubles of the gifted authoress, and her mother often regretted the disfigurement. One day Frederica cut off the hair around her forehead with the scissors. Her mother, not at once perceiving what she had been about, remarked in the course of the day, "Why, Frederica, your forehead is not so low after all." This delighted her daughter, but soon the hairs commenced to reappear, stiff and bristly. But with heroic perseverance, Frederica pulled them out, one after another, with a pair of tweezers, until she had achieved that fine high forehead, which those who saw her in her visit to this country may remember.

A retreating forehead is always a marplot to beauty,