Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/543

Rh than one of you, doubtless, has on the arm or on the breast some red or blue figure representing a heart pierced, two swords crossed, an anchor, or a hammer, symbols of your profession.

Along with these tattooings incrusted in the skin by various processes, we may place also the paintings. Here, again, is a means of embellishing that every people has practiced and practices still. Sometimes



these paintings have precise significations; there are the paintings of war, the paintings of peace, the paintings of fêtes etc. We do not go so far; but we must not forget that the most civilized Europeans have painted and still paint the countenance. Our grand-mothers habitually used white, and, above all, red; they put on patches, that is to say, small rounds of court-plaster to give beauty to the skin by contrast. And to-day, you know, our fashionable women tint themselves so well that a word has been invented on this subject. So