A Talk about Complexions.--Delicate Lotion.--Cause of Rough
Faces.--Sun Painting and Bleaching.--Court Ladies Refusing to Wash
their Faces.--Experiments with Olive-tar.--Consumption and Clear
Faces.--Rev. W. H. H. Murray on Olive-tar.--Porcelain Women.--Drawing
Humors to the Surface.--What is to be Done for the Weak Women?
A Southern lady sends the following recipe for glycerine lotion, which
is refined and pleasant as well as useful. The pain of sunburned and
freckled skin, so troublesome to many of our fair readers, can be
relieved, and the shining morning face of youth restored, by this
application: Take one ounce of sweet almonds, or of pistachio-nuts,
half a pint of elder or rose-water, and one ounce of pure glycerine;
grate the nuts, put the powder in a little bag of linen, and squeeze it
for several minutes in the rose-water; then add glycerine and a little
perfume. It may be used by wetting the face with it two or three times
a day. This is a grateful application for a parched, rough skin. It
should be allowed to dry thoroughly, when, if it feel sticky or pasty,
it may be washed off with warm water.
The reason why so many young women have rough faces is, they wash their
faces every day but neglect to cleanse their bodies. The pores are
clogged by secretions, and morbid matters in the blood break out in
the only free spot, the face. The ladies of King George’s court were
perfectly logical when they refused to wash their faces lest it should
spoil their complexions. They seldom washed either bodies or linen, and
it was dangerous to give their festering blood an outlet by clearing a
place for it.
Full-blooded girls whose complexions give them trouble should not eat
fat meat save in the depth of winter, nor drink milk. They may take
these in after-years, if they grow thin and weak from hard work or the
nursing of children. Their systems can turn the grapes and pears they
ought to feed on, the fish, chicken, and lean meat, the nutty oatmeal
and wheat cakes (not mushes), into flesh enough to round their elbows,
and strength enough to make their walk like the figure of a dance. They
should try daily bathing, or rather scrubbing with soap and hot water,
followed by a cold dip, a process taking a matter of ten minutes a day,
at most, if they know the meaning of dispatch. Very likely they will
need a few bottles of Saratoga water or doses of salts to clear the
blood, adhering religiously to a Graham diet the while, or their last
state after the medicine will be worse than the first. After taking the
sulphur vapor-baths they must go out-of-doors, and finish bleaching
themselves in the sun. By living in it five hours a day, they may gain
the lovely painted marble of the English girl’s face, who reaps all day
in the harvest field.
Cosmetics sometimes play tricks with fair skins which are quite
mysterious to the unlucky subject. This is the case with the tar
and olive ointment named a few chapters ago. Those who find that its
application brings out a fearful crop of pimples, and turns the skin
yellow, should feel that the ointment has been a friend to them, in
detecting a state of the blood that is any thing but safe. People of
sedentary habits, who pay little attention to their health, are not
aware how vitiated their blood may be for want of sunshine, good food,
and exercise. Its torpid current leaves no mark of disease on the
surface; humors concentrate in the vital organs, and finally appear in
the form of chronic disorders. Consumption leaves the skin clear and
brilliant, because the morbid matters which usually pass off through
the skin are eating away the life in ulcers beneath. The tar brings
them to the surface, and one application sometimes leaves a face in a
sorry state. Three ladies of different families tried the recipe at the
same time, with frightful results, for the reason that they were all
in the state when a dose of blood purifier would have had the same
effect. One lady kept on using the lotion, and her face became smooth
after trying it three or four times. When people perspire freely, such
unhappy effects are seldom noticed. Apropos of this, come a few lines
from W. H. H. Murray, the author of the _Hand-book of the Adirondacks_.
A lady who was puzzled by the effect of the cosmetic wrote to him about
it, knowing he was familiar with its use in the mountains, and received
this merry answer:
“I have had a hearty laugh over your perplexity. All I know is, the
mixture was common sailors’ tar and sweet-oil, with the consistency of
sirup. Our party, ladies and gentlemen both, have used it freely for
years in the woods, and the ladies have always declared that it made
their skin as soft as satin. Certain it is, it never caused any _rash_
in their case.”
Delicate, fair-skinned women are the very ones on whom this cosmetic
will have the effect of drawing humors to the surface. Heavens! how
many of this sort there are in the world--pale, shadowy as porcelain,
fragile of bone and tender of skin, about as useful as wish-bones of
a Christmas chicken! They have intense souls; it is a pity they have
not enough body to hold them. Is there not wit enough in the world to
conjure flesh to the bones and strength to the muscles of this great
army of weak women?