Special means are essential to special growth. Throwing quoits and sweeping are good exercises to develop the arms. There is nothing like three hours of house-work a day for giving a woman a good figure, and if she sleep in tight cosmetic gloves, she need not fear that her hands will be spoiled. The time to form the hands is in youth, and with thimbles for the finger-tips, and close gloves lined with cold cream, every mother might secure a good hand for her daughter. She should be particular to see that long-wristed lisle-thread gloves are drawn on every time the girl goes out. Veils she should discard, except in cold and windy weather, when they should be drawn close over the head. A broad-leafed hat for the country is protection enough for the summer; the rest of the year the complexion needs all the sun it can get.
There is commonly a want of fullness in those muscles of the shoulder which give its graceful slope. This is developed by the use of the skipping-rope, in swinging it over the head, and by battledoor, which keeps the arms extended, at the same time using the muscles of the neck and shoulders. Swinging by the hands from a rope is capital, and so is swinging from a bar. These muscles are the last to receive exercise in common modes of life, and playing ball, bean-bags, or pillow-fights are convenient ways of calling them into action. Singing scales with corsets off, shoulders thrown back, lungs deeply inflated, mouth wide open, and breath held, is the best tuition for insuring that fullness to the upper part of the chest which gives majesty to a figure even when the bust is meagre. These scales should be practiced half an hour morning and afternoon, gaining two ends at once—increase of voice and perfection of figure.
This brings us to the inquiries made by more than one correspondent for some means of developing the bust. Every mother should pay attention to this matter before her daughters think of such a thing for themselves, by seeing that their dresses are never in the least constricted across the chest, and that a foolish dressmaker never puts padding into their waists. The horrible custom of wearing pads is the ruin of natural figures, by heating and pressing down the bosom. This most delicate and sensitive part of a woman’s form must always be kept cool, and well supported by a linen corset. The open-worked ones are by far the best, and the compression, if any, should not be over the heart and fixed ribs, as it generally is, but just at the waist, for not more than the width of a broad waistband. Six inches of thick coutille over the heart and stomach—those parts of the body that have most vital heat—must surely disorder them and affect the bust as well. It would be better if the coutille were over the shoulders or the abdomen, and the whalebones of the corset held together by broad tapes, so that there would be less dressing over the heart, instead of more. A low, deep bosom, rather than a bold one, is a sign of grace in a full-grown woman, and a full bust is hardly admirable in an unmarried girl. Her figure should be all curves, but slender, promising a fuller beauty when maturity is reached. One is not fond of over-ripe pears.
Flat figures are best dissembled by puffed and shirred blouse-waists, or by corsets with a fine rattan run in the top of the bosom gore, which throws out the fullness sufficiently to look well in a plain corsage. Of all things, India-rubber pads act most injuriously by constantly sweating the skin, and ruining the bust beyond hope of restoration. To improve its outlines, wear a linen corset fitting so close at the end of the top gores as to support the bosom well. For this the corset must be fitted to the skin, and worn next the under-flannel. Night and morning wash the bust in the coldest water—sponging it upward, but never down. Madame Celnart relates that the bayaderes of India cultivate their forms by wearing a cincture of linen under the breasts, and at night chafing them lightly with a piece of linen. The breasts should never be touched but with the utmost delicacy, as other treatment renders them weak and flaccid, and not unfrequently results in cancer. A baby’s bite has more than once inflicted this disease upon its mother. But one thing is to be solemnly cautioned, that no human being—doctor, nurse, nor the mother herself—on any pretense, save in case of accident, be allowed to touch a girl’s figure. It would be unnecessary to say this, were not French and Irish nurses, especially old and experienced, ones, sometimes in the habit of stroking the figures of young girls committed to their charge, with the idea of developing them. This is not mentioned from hearsay. Mothers can not be too careful how they leave their children with even well-meaning servants. A young girl’s body is more sensitive than any harp is to the air that plays upon it. Nature—free, uneducated, and direct—responds to every touch on that seat of the nerves, the bosom, by an excitement that is simply ruinous to a child’s nervous system. This is pretty plain talking, but no plainer than the subject demands. Girls are very different in their feelings. Some affectionate, innocent, hearty natures remain through their lives as simple as when they were babes taking their bath under their mothers’ hands; while others, equally innocent but more susceptible, require to be guarded and sheltered even from the violence of a caress as if from contagion and pain.
Due attention to the general health always has its effect in restoring the bust to its roundness. It is a mistake that it is irremediably injured by nursing children. A babe may be taught not to pinch and bite its mother, and the exercise of a natural function can injure her in no way, if proper care is taken to sustain the system at the same time. Cold compresses of wet linen worn over the breast are very soothing and beneficial, provided they do not strike a chill to a weak chest. At the same time, the cincture should be carefully adjusted. Weakness of any kind affects the contour of the figure, and it is useless to try to improve it in any other way than by restoring the strength where it is wanting. Tepid sitz-baths strengthen the muscles of the hips, and do away with that dragging which injures the firmness of the bosom. Bathing in water to which ammonia is added strengthens the skin, but the use of camphor to dry the milk after weaning a child is reprehensible. No drying or heating lotions of any kind should ever be applied except in illness.
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.