CHAPTER XXIII.
Hands and Complexions.—Preparing for Parties.—Refining Rough Faces.—Carbolic Baths.—Chalk and Cascarilla.—Glycerine Wash.—School-girls’ Flushed Hands and Faces.—To Soften the Hands.—Red Noses.—Secrets of Making-up.—Cologne for the Eyes.—Cosmetic Gloves.—To Impart a Brilliant Complexion.
People are in trouble in cold weather about their hands and their complexions, which take the time when parties abound, and owners need their very best looks, to put on a ruinous air. It is more than suspected that the young lady who begs for some good face powder or wash that will hide a bad complexion without spoiling it entirely, has the end in view of making herself presentable in society for the winter. Her entirely reasonable request shall be attended to, no less on her own account than because she writes in the name of four devoted subscribers. Carbolic soaps fail to remove the roughness of her used complexion, and internal remedies must be resorted to. These should be prescribed by a physician, and would be passed over at once to his province had not long experience shown that doctors scoff at the idea of prescribing for such puny troubles as flesh-worms and pimples while there are so many typhoid fevers and chronic ulcers to be treated. The pimples foretold the fever, and the impurities that first showed themselves in the shape of “black-heads” might have been discharged at the time, and not left to malignant issues. Pimples are disease of a light form, and nature tries to throw off in this way bad blood that might give one a worse turn if kept in the body. It can not be said too often that next to keeping murder and wickedness out of one’s soul is the necessity of keeping one’s blood pure by good food, strict cleanliness, warmth, and bright, sweet air. These troublesome pimples are a sign that the young ladies who complain of them have eaten food that did not suit them, eaten irregularly, or not bathed often enough, since some skins require more frequent cleansing and stimulus than others, because they secrete more. Perhaps other functions are disturbed, or the blood is not stirred enough by lively exercise. Directions for diet have been given before in these pages. It will be enough to recommend people with irritable blood to drink a glass or two of mild cider, or eat oranges or lemons, as they fancy, within the half hour before each meal, especially before breakfast. As hard work or exercise as one can endure stirs sluggish secretions, and work should always be brisk. Many a young woman mopes over house-work day after day, standing on her feet most of the time, and fancies that she has exercise, when her slow blood does not once in ten hours receive impulse enough to send it vigorously from head to foot in a way one could call living. “Work swiftly and rest well,” ought to be a woman’s rule. When the blood flows swiftly, the eye is clear, the sight better, the skin refined, and the whole body feels improvement; memory and thought are improved, idleness takes wing, and happiness steals into the heart.
Young ladies should not give up their bathing with carbolic soap. Hot water, with a spoonful of prophylactic fluid or phenyl to each quart, is a very wholesome bath in skin disorders, followed by a brisk rub with crash till warm, or wrapping in a blanket by the fire till all danger of chilliness is past. The phenyl and prophylactic fluid are milder forms of carbolic acid, and, like it, disinfectant and healing. A sponge-bath or plunge at seventy-five degrees after a hot bath prevents all weakening effects and taking cold. None but robust persons should ever take baths except in a warm room. The bath-room should always be so arranged as to be heated in a few minutes. Otherwise the bath is best taken in one’s own room before the fire.
The disguise for a bad skin is easily found. Refined chalk is the safest thing to use, and costs far less by its own name than put up in photograph boxes as “Lily White,” etc. Cascarilla powder, which the Cuban ladies use so much, is recommended as entirely harmless. It is prepared from a root used in medicine, and in New York is sold at all the little Cuban shops, with cigars, tropic sweetmeats, and other necessaries of life. Either wash the face with thick suds from glycerine soap, and dust the powder on with a swan’s-down puff, removing superfluous traces with a fresh puff kept for the purpose, or else grind the powder in wet linen by pressing it in the fingers, and apply what oozes through to the skin. A fine wash for a rough or sunburned skin is made of two ounces of distilled water, one ounce of glycerine, one ounce of alcohol, and half an ounce of tincture of benzoin. Without the water, and with the addition of two ounces of prepared chalk free from bismuth, it makes a far better cosmetic for whitening the face than any of the expensive “Balms of Youth” or “Magnolia Blooms.” If a flesh tint is desired, add a grain of carmine.
The lesser trial of rough, red hands that are not chapped but unsightly, when not caused by exposure and work, indicates bad circulation of the blood. School-girls who study a good deal without due exercise often go home with flushed faces and red hands, to say nothing of an irritable state of the nerves, that can only be righted by very regular sleep and exercise, aided by hot foot-baths. Out-door exercise in winter is an excellent corrective for rush of blood to the head. Dancing brings the blood into play more healthfully than any movement allowed to grown women. The hands are improved by wearing gloves that fit closely, especially if they are of soft castor or dog-skin. In most cases, all that is needed to soften hands is to rub sweet-almond oil into the skin two or three days in succession. A quicker way than this in the country is to hold the hand on a rapidly turning grindstone a moment or two. It leaves the palm, forefinger, and thumb satin smooth, and removes callosities incredibly quick, taking off bad stains at the same time. Farmers’ girls will take note of this, and also that rubbing the hands with a slice of raw potato will remove vegetable stains. Rubbing the hands well with almond-oil, and plastering them with as much fine chalk as they can take, on going to bed, will usually whiten them in three days’ time, and this hint may be of service before a party of consequence.
Redness of the nose is a sign of bad circulation and of humor in the blood. It is best treated by applications of phenyl, rubbed on often each day, and by alteratives. A spoonful of white mustard-seed taken in water before breakfast every morning is of service in this case and in rush of blood to the head, which always has something to do with constipation. Refined chalk made into a thick plaster with one third as much glycerine as water, and spread on the parts, will cool erysipelatous inflammation and reduce the redness.
The secrets of “making-up” have hardly all been mentioned, though the list is growing long. What girl does not know that eating lump-sugar wet with Cologne just before going out will make her eyes bright, or that the homelier mode of flirting soap-suds into them has the same effect? Spanish ladies squeeze orange juice into their eyes to make them shine. A Continental recipe for whitening the hands looks strong enough: Take half a pound of soft-soap, a gill of salad-oil, an ounce of mutton tallow, and boil together; after boiling ceases, add one gill of spirits of wine and a scruple of ambergris; rip a pair of gloves three sizes too large, spread them with this paste, and sew up to be worn at night. A curious wash, evidently Italian in its origin, is: Equal parts of melon, pumpkin, gourd, and cucumber seeds pounded to powder, softened with cream, and thinned to a paste with milk, perfumed with a grain of musk and three drops of oil of lemon (oil of jasmine may be substituted for the musk). The face, bosom, and arms are anointed with this overnight, and washed off in warm water in the morning. The authority quoted says it adds remarkable purity and brilliance to the complexion. Such pains will women take for that beauty which, after all, is only skin deep. But did not De Staël say she would give half her knowledge for personal charms.