If Christiana would invoke mechanical aid to bring down her high shoulders and put flexibility into her chest muscles, after thirty years of abuse, it is easily done. Walking with a pail of water in each hand is rather dull work unless there is a call for domestic help. A homely but very effectual way of educating the muscles is to wear weights fastened to the shoulders. A shawl-strap answers every purpose, buckled on the shoulders with the handle between them on the back, and fastening a flat-iron of five or six pounds’ weight to the straps which hang under the arms. An extra buckle may be sewed half-way down each strap, to fasten the iron on the end by a second loop. The weights may be worn while reading or writing for hours, and will be found rather agreeable to balance the stooping propensity by throwing the stress on fresh muscles. With or without it, nine tenths of women from eighteen years old upward will need another simple support to relieve the muscles of the trunk below the waist. It matters little what causes this feebleness, whether too hard work, the weight of skirts, or degeneration of the muscular fibre from want of exercise and lack of fresh air. Its relief is imperative to preserve bloom and life of any kind worth calling life. If any girl or woman can not dance, run up stairs, take long walks, or stand about the house-work, no matter how slight the fatigue, support must be provided. Women wear corsets, and say they can not exist without them, when the demand for aid of the relaxed muscles of the hips and back, though far more imperative, is neglected. The means are very simple: a bandage of linen toweling, soft and cool, buckled, tied, or pinned, as tight as will be comfortable, and so arranged as to relieve every muscle that feels fatigue. This is worth all the manufactured appliances in the market, and its prompt use averts a hundred distressing consequences. At the first approach of debility these girdles should be worn, as they have been from ancient times among Greek and Jewish women. It is not sure that their office of prevention is not more essential than that of cure. Tight corsets are an abomination, for they interfere with flexibility, and so with that constant exercise of the trunk muscles which alone can keep them in tone—keep them from degeneration and atrophy. As to the muscles of the back and abdomen affected by the girdle, a degree of support just sufficient to encourage them to their work, and prevent their giving it up in fatigue and despair, will exercise and strengthen them. A bandage tighter than is needed for this will do harm, not only by keeping the muscles idle, and so weakening them, but by compressing the abdominal viscera, and thus producing numerous evils.
There is a game children play called “wring the towel,” in which two clasp hands and whirl their arms over their heads without losing hold, that every woman ought to practice to keep her muscles flexible. Hardly any exercise could be devised which would give play to so many muscles at once. A woman ought to be as lithe from head to heel as a willow wand, not for the sake of beauty only, but for the varied duties and functions she must perform.
It would be an artistic feat to take Christiana through a course of baths, diet, sun-sittings, and open-air walks, to show her to herself. The oleander glow on firm cheeks, the eye of light, the tread of Diana, the buoyancy of body that fosters buoyancy of mind and spirits, would please her with herself.
How dexterously Nature inserts the reward of beauty before the self-denials needed to gain health! A thoroughly healthy woman never is unbeautiful. She is full of life, and vivacity shines in her face and manner, while her magnetism attracts every creature who comes within its influence.
CHAPTER X.
The Bonniest Kate in Christendom.—A Word to Mothers and Aunts.—Different Vanities.—The Sorrows of Ugly Women.—Recipes of an Ancient Beauty.—Sand Wash.—Color for the Nails.—Embrocation for the Hands.—Soap to Bleach the Arms.—Freckle Lotions.—Artistic Enthusiasm at the Toilet.
Was the last chapter too much of a sermon on Christiana’s breakfast? You think so, Kate, who are longing to learn some art that may make you the bonniest Kate in Christendom. You say your hands are rough and unsightly, your hair grows where you do not want it, and is none too thick where it ought to be. Your eyebrows are bushy—a most unfeminine trait, that makes you look fierce as a lamb with mustaches. You don’t seem lovely to yourself, and this consciousness makes you stiff and shy in your manner. Somebody is to blame for this state of things. Either your mother, or your aunt, or the lady principal of the school where you studied, ought to have taken you in hand before you were fourteen, and showed you the remedies for these defects that were to affect your spirits and comfort in after-life. A girl should be taught to take care of her skin and hair just as she is to hold her dress out of the dust, and not to crumple her sash when she sits down. One thing will not make her vain more than another. There are many vanities to be found in women’s character. One is vain of knowing three languages, one of her Sunday-school devotion, another of her pattern temper, and one of her pretty face. Of all these errors, the last is most endurable. Every attraction filched from a girl by neglect or design is so much stolen from her dowry that never can be replaced.
Victor Hugo says that he who would know suffering should learn the sorrows of women. Let him say of ugly women, and he will touch the depth of bitterness. What tears the plain ones shed on silent pillows, shrinking even from the pale, beautiful moonshine that contrasts so fatally with their homeliness. They would give years of life to win one of beauty. This regret is natural, irresistible, and not to be forbidden. Better let the grief have its way till the busy period of life takes a woman’s thoughts off herself, and she forgets to care whether she is beautiful or not. Dam up the sluices of any sorrow, and it deepens and grows wider. Is this treating a peculiarly feminine regret over-tenderly? This is written in remembrance of a girl who thought herself so homely that she absolutely prayed that she might die and go to be perfect in heaven. More than one girl makes such a wish this night before small mirrors in cottage or mansion chambers, with no eye but her own to scan her hopeless features. Why doesn’t some one open a school of fine arts, literally des beaux-arts, and make a greater success than Worth, by improving wearers instead of costumes?
Till that time comes, let us make the best of present resources, and consider these recipes, unearthed from an ancient book-shelf belonging to a maiden lady who was once, if tradition may be credited, a beauty of no mean order. There is one thing to console us, Kate: you and I will never have to cry for our lost beauty. Your hands are to be pitied, for soft, sensitive fingers are what a woman can least afford to lose. They are needed to nurse sick folks, and do quick sewing, and handle children with. So we are glad to learn something of this kind.
To soften the hands, fill a wash-basin half full of fine white sand and soap-suds as hot as can be borne. Wash the hands in this five minutes at a time, brushing and rubbing them in the sand. The best is flint sand, or the white powdered quartz sold for filters. It may be used repeatedly by pouring the water away after each washing, and adding fresh to keep it from blowing about. Rinse in warm lather of fine soap, and after drying rub them in dry bran or corn meal. Dust them, and finish with rubbing cold cream well into the skin. This effectually removes the roughness caused by house-work, and should be used every day, first removing ink or vegetable stains with acid.