A Dark Potion.--Olive-oil and Tar for the Face.--Olive-tar for
Inhalation.--Carbolic Lotion for Pimples.--Cure for Musquito
Bites.--Pale Blondes.--A French Marquise.--Deepening Colors by
Sunlight.--Seductive Cosmetics.--Nose-machine.--Finger Thimbles.
Neither distilled waters perfumed like May, nor embrocation smoother
than velvet, are this time to be offered you. The compound in its
ugliness is more like a witch’s potion, and the odor is generally
liked by those only who are used to it. But its merits are equal to
its ugliness--nay, so firmly am I persuaded of its effectiveness that
before sundown I doubt not its virtues will be in active test within
this household. Sea winds will roughen the face, and miscellaneous food
deteriorate the softest skins. There are wrinkles, too, showing their
first faint daring on the brow before the glass--wrinkles which had
no business there for ten years to come, at any rate. “What hand shall
soothe” their trace away?
It is a hunter’s prescription that comes in use. You will hear of it
along the Saranac, or up in the Franconia region, where the pines and
spruces yield fresh resins for its making. It is popular there for
its efficacy in keeping the black-flies and musquitoes away; yet even
hunters bear witness to its excellence in leaving the skin fair and
innocent. Thus runs the formula, simple enough, in all conscience,
yet how few will have the boldness to try it: Mix one spoonful of
the best _tar_ in a pint of pure olive or almond-oil, by heating the
two together in a tin cup set in boiling water. Stir till completely
mixed and smooth, putting in more oil if the compound is too thick to
run easily. Rub this on the face when going to bed, and lay patches
of soft old cloth on the cheeks and forehead to keep the tar from
rubbing off. The bed-linen must be protected by old sheets folded and
thrown over the pillows. The odor, when mixed with oil, is not strong
enough to be unpleasant--some people fancy its suggestion of aromatic
pine breath--and the black, unpleasant mask washes off easily with
warm water and soap. The skin comes out, after several applications,
soft, moist, and tinted like a baby’s. Certainly this wood ointment
is preferable to the household remedy for coarse skins of wetting in
buttermilk. Further, it effaces incipient wrinkles by softening and
refining the skin. The French have long used turpentine to efface
the marks of age, but the olive-tar is pleasanter. A pint of best
olive-oil costs about forty cents at the grocer’s; for the tar apply
to the druggist, who keeps it on hand for inhaling. A spoonful of the
mixture put in the water vase of a stove gives a faint pine odor to the
air of a room, which is very soothing to weak lungs. Physicians often
recommend it.
What is to be done with the malignant little red pimples that crop out
annoyingly at the close of warm weather? The cause is very plain.
When cool days check the perspiration, the system must send out matter
by some other outlet before it can adjust itself to the new state of
things. Nothing is better for the irritable face than bathing with a
dilution of carbolic acid--one teaspoonful of the common acid to a
pint of rose-water. The acid, as usually sold in solution, is about
one half the strength of really pure acid, which is very hard to find.
The recipe given above was furnished by a regular physician, and was
used on a baby, to soothe eruptions caused by heat, with the happiest
results. Care must be taken not to let the wash get into the eyes,
as it certainly will smart, though it may not be strong enough to do
further harm. No more purifying, healing lotion is known to medical
skill, and its work is speedy. Poor baby was not beautiful with his
face of unaccustomed spots and blotches, when the laving with the fluid
began at night, but next morning they were hardly visible. I commend
this again to mothers as a specific against those irritations with
which children suffer. For soothing musquito bites alone it is worth
all the camphor, soda washes, and hartshorn that ever were tried.
There is a word of comfort to-day for those most hopeless cases of
unloveliness, tow-colored blondes. Light hair of the faintest shade,
without a tinge of gold or auburn, is now fancied abroad. Chignons of
pale hair, dressed in abundant frizzes, command nearly as high a price
as those pure _blondes dorées_ which have been worth so many times
their weight in gold. Ladies of fashion in France dye their hair, or
rather bleach it, to this colorless state; and the effect is very
piquant with dark eyes and complexion. At the fêtes in Paris recently
a marchioness of daring taste attracted general admiration by her pale
tresses, relieved by profuse black velvet trimmings. Indeed, the only
wear for _très blondes_ is black, even if it is only black alpaca,
with transparent ruches at the neck and wrists. Let such not fear to
expose themselves to the fiercest sun to gain a shade or two of color
in the face. If the fine-grained skin which accompanies such hair take
on a pale, even brown, so much the better for artistic effect. Dark
eyes will give brilliancy to the dullest face; and dark they must be,
if the harmless crayon can make them so by skillful shading about the
light lashes. If ever art is a boon, it is when called in to change the
sickly whiteness of too blonde brows and lashes. We can hardly expect
that girls will carry their zeal for coloring so far as to feed for
months on the meal from sorghum seed, which has the powerful effect
of deepening the tint of the entire flesh--a phenomenon as true as
strange; but we must hope that they will live and work in the rays
of that great beautifier, the sun, which brings out and perfects all
undeveloped tones in Nature’s painting. Pale eyes darken in exercise
out-of-doors, and pasty skins grow prismatic like mother-of-pearl,
in that wonderful way which fascinated Monsieur Taine when he beheld
the miraculous brows and shoulders of English ladies. The idea did
not seem to suggest itself to the critical Frenchman, but it will to
every woman, that these charms were not wholly due to Nature. It is
bewildering to read the announcements of toilet preparations under
seductive names--rosaline, blanc de perle, rose-leaf powder, magnolia,
velvetine, _eau romaine d’or_, and the rest. Think of the potent
chemistry which waits outside our windows untried! Among the list of
“eyebrow pencils,” “nail polishes,” and lip salves, a foreign paper
brings to notice one invention which might be of use--a nose-machine,
which, we are told, so directs the soft cartilage that an ill-formed
nose is quickly shaped to perfection. No surgeon will deny that this is
possible to a great degree. That it would be a boon nobody can doubt,
seeing how many unfortunates walk the world whose noses have every
appearance of having been sat upon, or made acquainted with the nether
millstone. Long thimbles reaching to the second joint for shaping
fingers are a new device, though something of the kind was used by
very particular beauties fifty years ago. The only thing women would
not do to increase their comeliness is to put themselves on the rack,
unless indeed it were to live healthily.