Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/87

 pleased to term them, nor have they any secret, or at least it is an open one. But it is very stuff o' the conscience with them to yield to no inordinate emotion, to be temperate in all things, and to hold under strict command their bodies and their minds. You see they are rewarded by prolonged good looks; and if you step around to an insurance office you will learn their chance of long life is notably better than that of the rest of us.

Vacancy or stolidity of expression, though less intolerable than the perpetual twitching we have just described, should be shunned with equal care, and can be conquered with as certain success, if one sets about it diligently. It is easy to appear interested, or merry, or sad, when we are so.

Not a few women and many a young man are annoyed by a tendency to blush on slight occasion. The tell-tale blood mantles the cheeks and forehead at most inopportune moments, and seems quite beyond the control of the mind. The utmost exertion of volition does not hinder it. In some constitutions no endeavor, no custom of society can overcome it.

Count Alexandra de Tilly had been page to Queen Marie Antoinette, and had lived all his life in the best circles; but he confesses in his "Memoirs" that this difficulty had been insurmountable. "I verily believe," he says, "that if any one were abruptly and in public to say to me: 'Count, I accuse you of con