Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/86

 There are some persons who, when they weep, screw up the countenance in such an unheard-of manner, that it forces the looker-on to be amused, even while he sympathizes; and there are others who, when they laugh, do such violence to all the laws of good looks that it is enough to make the judicious weep. We have heard not a few public speakers, worthy men, too, who forfeited half their power by grimacing in the pulpit like a mime on the stage. School girls often learn to chew with their mouths open, and with an exertion of the muscles of the jaws quite superfluous, even though, like Sancho Panza, they chew on both sides at once.

All such habits are enemies to beauty, and are also inconsistent with good breeding. They must be reformed, not indifferently, but at once, and altogether.

The reform must not stop here. It must extend to the mind itself. Violent passion, or long indulgence of any one emotion, is not less hurtful to the face than it is to the mind. Serenity of disposition is the true Fountain of Youth.

We live in the ancient city of Penn, and many a visitor has asked us: "Doctor, why is it these old Quaker ladies whom I meet in the streets have such fresh complexions, and so few wrinkles? Is it their poke-bonnets which keep off the sun? Or have they some secret?"

No, madam, it is not their poke-bonnets, as you are