THE ART OF LOOKING BEAUTIFUL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XI, 10 March 1894, Page 238

THE ART OF LOOKING BEAUTIFUL.

WRINKLES AND FRECKLES. Let strong-minded people say what they will, there is an ever-present love and craving for beauty in all its forms in the minds of most people, and an almost instinctive longing in the minds of most women—and of many men I —to satisfy as far as they can that craving in the minds of those around them, by presenting an appearance as pleasing as nature and the resources they have at command will allow of; and so it is that in every age woman adorns herself with many changes and much variety in the cut, colour, and fashion of her garments, in the arrangement of her hair, and in the care and improvement of her complexion and figure, and this feeling is just as strong and just as instinctive in the lower ranks of life as it is in the upper. I have even read somewhere that a woman at Millbank Prison, undergoing a sentence, caused great anxiety and much wrath in the mind of the matron by the trouble she gave and the bad example she set to the other women prisoners in her attempts at personal adornment. It appears that she would use the candles as pomatum for her hair, the plaster she would pick off the walls to make her face white, and the red threads out of her apron, steeped in water, to colour her cheeks red. Her hair she would dress in strange and new fashions every day, and her prison garb she would also alter from time to time in a vain attempt to render it becoming and graceful. And all this from the sheer instinct of personal adornment (?), for the only time she ever saw any of the opposite sex if at all was in chapel on Sundays. And to read the artifices resorted to from the earliest ages down to the present day, for beautifying the person, is an interesting and amusing page of human vanity. Now, of course, science and modern discoveries have exploded a good many of the older ideas that were more or less founded on superstitions, and were often very injurious, and have also given us to-day far more skilful and less harmful remedies than those of old for the ravages which time and the stress of living make in all of us. But there is one defect for which no cure has hitherto been discovered, no absolute cure, that is—wrinkles 1 Massage, gentle rubbing in a contrary direction to the line of the wrinkle with some cold cream, steaming the face, and, above all, plenty of good food, fresh air, exercise, a fair amount of healthful amusement, and a cheerful contented mind, will usually cause the wrinkles to disappear that come from over-study, illness, mental worry or distress, or indulgence in fits of nervous, irritable temper (a most prolific source of wrinkles '.), if the subject be still young ; but if the wrinkles come in the natural course of time and from the shrinking of the superfluous subcutaneous fat due to approaching age. nothing that has yet been invented can remove them. The utmost that can be done is to conceal them to a certain extent by rubbing cold cream or linoline well in and lightly powdering. But to me—and I think most sensible people would say the same—the face of a woman well over thirty without any lines, is a face absolutely without expression, and consequently without charm. If you have acquired an undue number of freckles during the hot weather you can get rid of them by applying the following lotion night and morning : —Bichloride of mercury, six grains ; hydrochloric acid (pure), one fluid drachm ; distilled water, a quarter of a pint; mix well and add two fluid ounces each of rectified spirit and rose water and one ounce of glycerine. If you are uniformly sunburnt and wish to remove it, you may bathe your face night and morning with a mixture of

equal parts of fresh lemon-juice, rose-water, and rectified spirit, well mixed and strained (after letting it stand for day) through muslin. A quarter of an ounce of red rose leaves, steeped in a quarter of a pint each of fresh lemon-juice and brandy for about three hours, and then pressed, strained and decanted, makes a good lotion for whitening the skin.