Tan, like borrowing friends, and various other afflictions, is awfully
easy to get, but really more than passing difficult to remove. It is
delightful to sit on a big bowlder that dots a great, lovely, sandy
waste and watch your hands gradually turn from their customary
whiteness to a deep burnt orange. One has to have something to show for
a trip out of town, one thinks, else the doubting Thomases will arise
and give vent to suspicions that one has been merely concealing oneself
in an attic or back bedroom. It is pleasant, too, to go fishing, with a
dainty, absurd little hat that, although it looks pretty, is about as
useful as would be a beaten biscuit pinned to one's tresses. You feel
your nose becoming unusually warm, and it begins to tingle and smart as
if the pores were filling up with hot sand. All of which is quite in
keeping with summer-resort existence, and you are as proud as Lucifer
when you trail back to town to show this cerise-tinted evidence of your
outing.
But the friends who you thought would envy you giggle and smirk and
nudge each other and make suggestions that are supposed to be
mirth-compelling. And then and there you decide to do differently next
summer. A sunburned nose may be a treasurable possession away from
town, but back among the hosts of the city it is a different matter.
More than that, it is an affliction.
If the weeks at the seashore or the lakes would only brown the summer
girl it would not matter so much. But instead of making the skin a
beautiful, poetical olive tint, it usually turns it to a hue which is
best compared to the flaunting colors of the auctioneer's emblem. If
the girl is reckless, if she runs here and there without a hat, and
gives never a moment to the care of her skin, her own mother is not
likely to recognize her unless the summer girl soon repents and mends
her ways.
What mischief Old Sol cannot do, the brisk winds will contribute. The
result is usually a red-eyed, red-nosed, flakey-skinned little woman,
whom one would never suspect of having been rollicking through a few
weeks of midsummer joys. If her ears are not blistered, her nose is,
and if her complexion is not harsh and rough from lack of care, it is
bespeckled with freckles and covered with a deep layer of golden brown
tan that has distributed itself like patches on a crazy quilt.
There is not one woman in forty who can afford to ignore the ordinary
precautions for preserving her complexion during the summer months.
A parasol is the first necessity. A white gauze veil is another,
although this can be dispensed with if the skin is not particularly
sensitive to sun and wind. Never, under any circumstances, must you
bathe your face in soap and water before going out of door or just
after coming in. This habit will make the freckles pop out in fine
order. After coming in from a tramp or a fishing party bathe the face
at once in half a cupful of sweet milk in which a pinch of soda has
been dissolved. If this is inconvenient, as it often is when one is a
hotel guest and not a cottager, then use a good face cream. Strong
soaps containing an excess of alkali are bad enough at any time, but
during the hot weather they are particularly trying to almost any skin.
Too much care cannot be taken to get proper soaps.
The following sedative lotion applied to the face will prevent its
tanning or freckling to any extent, that is, if one takes proper care
of one's skin:
Distilled witch hazel, 3 ounces.
Prepared cucumber juice, 3 ounces.
Rose-water, 1-1/2 ounces.
Essence white rose, 1-1/2 ounces.
Simple tincture of benzoin, one-half ounce.
After rubbing this into the skin with the finger tips and letting
the cuticle absorb it well, apply a pure vegetable powder.
When the face becomes sunburned apply plenty of cold cream. But be sure
that it is your own home-made cream, else you may be putting lard or
something else on your face, which, in a most amazing short time, will
produce a thrifty growth of tiny, fine hairs. And then you will wish
you had never lived to see the coming of the "happy summertime."
Lastly, to remove freckles, quickly apply lemon juice with a camel's
hair complexion brush. Let the juice dry in and massage with creme
marquise.