SLEEPING IN MASKS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1757, 11 June 1886, Page 5

SLEEPING IN MASKS.

It is stated that a thousand women sleep masked every night in New York city. This is an estimate, but it is based on facts that make it entirely trustworthy. In one of the streets given over to retail trade in women's decoration, from the harmless, necessary calico, to the vain, superfluous satin, from essential coverings of feet with shoes, to overlyings of faces with cosmetics, there hangs a sign-board which tells that toiletmasks are sold up-stairs. " On entering" says the correspondent of an American journal, " I found that a traffic was actually going on. The article of humbug was a pliable mask, made seemingly of cloth impregnated with an oilyunguent, and meant to be worn on the face during bed-time, with the expectation, that it would improve the complexion. The false visage was in a great variety of features and sizes, so that any woman could get a snug fit,the idea being that the skin of the entire face should come into close contact with the supposed medicament. The probability is that such a sweating of the skin really produces softness and smoothness, though exposure to the cold might easily chap the tender surface, and thereby more than spoil the gain. I learned to a certainty that about two thousand masks had been sold within a week, and it is fair to believe that with so many distributed, at least a thousand women are nightly using them."