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CHAP. I.] decay—a belief which, to a certain extent, may be accounted for by the diseased and feeble members of society being so far in the majority that they have made a law for themselves, while a thoroughly healthy woman is such a rarity that she is almost looked upon as abnormal. The perfect example of the beauty of decay is the consumptive, with soft, silky hair, delicate skin, touched on the cheeks with a brilliant flush, large, dark, sparkling eyes, made to appear still larger by the black rings which surround them, slenderly formed limbs, and tapering fingers with their filbert nails. Yet this is a beauty hardly to be desired: it is but the sign of a disease which before long will stamp it out for ever.

Delicacy is considered by some to be admirable, and women may even be met with who assume a state of ill-health for the purpose of getting sympathy. A great many people are always complaining, but still more go through life uncomplainingly, with a sort of dull, negative suffering, the result of a low vitality, which, if they think about it at all, they attribute to constitutional defects, but which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, might have been remedied by timely obedience to the laws of health.

If people are positively ill they call in a doctor, whose orders they follow more or less scrupulously, but usually without a glimmer of their true meaning; of taking care of themselves, however, and so in most cases preventing the disease which he is often called in too late to cure, they have but the