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.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Women’s Looks and Nerves.—A Low-toned Generation.—Children and their Ways.—Brief Madness.—Women in the Woods.—Singing.—Work well done the Easiest.—Sleep the Remedy for Temper.—Hours for Sleep.—The Great Medicines—Sunshine, Music, Work, and Sleep.
Women’s looks depend too much on the state of their nerves and their peace of mind to pass them over. The body at best is the perfect expression of the soul. The latter may light wasted features to brilliance, or turn a face of milk and roses dark with passion or dead with dullness; it may destroy a healthy frame or support a failing one. Weak nerves may prove too much for the temper of St. John, and break down the courage of Saladin. Better things are before us, coming from a fuller appreciation of the needs of body and soul, but the fact remains that this is a generation of weak nerves. It shows particularly in the low tone of spirits common to men and women. They can not bear sunshine in their houses; they find the colors of Jacques Minot roses and of Gérome’s pictures too deep; the waltz in Traviata is too brilliant, Rossini’s music is too sensuous, and Wagner’s too sensational; Mendelssohn is too light, Beethoven too cold. Their work is fuss; instead of resting, they idle—and there is a wide difference between the two things. People who drink strong tea and smoke too many cigars, read or stay in-doors too much, find the hum of creation too loud for them. The swell of the wind in the pines makes them gloomy, the sweep of the storm prostrates them with terror, the everlasting beating of the surf and the noises of the streets alike weary their worthless nerves. The happy cries of school-children at play are a grievance to them; indeed, there are people who find the chirp of the hearth cricket and the singing tea-kettle intolerable. But it is a sign of diseased nerves. Nature is full of noises, and only where death reigns is there silence. One wishes that the men and women who can’t bear a child’s voice, a singer’s practice, or the passing of feet up and down stairs might be transported to silence like that which wraps the poles or the spaces beyond the stars, till they could learn to welcome sound, without which no one lives.
Children must make noise, and a great deal of it, to be healthy. The shouts, the racket, the tumble and turmoil they make, are nature’s way of ventilating their bodies, of sending the breath full into the very last corner of the lungs, and the blood and nervous fluid into every cord and fibre of their muscles. Instead of quelling their riot, it would be a blessing to older folks to join it with them. There is an awful truth following this assertion. Do you know that men and women go mad after the natural stimulus which free air and bounding exercise supply? It is the lack of this most powerful inspiration, which knows no reaction, that makes them drunkards, gamesters, and flings them into every dissipation of body and soul. Men and women, especially those leading studious, repressed lives, often confess to a longing for some fierce, brief madness that would unseat the incubus of their lives. Clergymen, editors, writing women, and those who lead sedentary lives, have said in your hearing and mine that something ailed them they could not understand. They felt as if they would like to go on a spree, dance the tarantella, or scream till they were tired. They thought it the moving of some depraved impulse not yet rooted out of their natures, and to subdue it cost them hours of struggle and mortification. Poor souls! They need not have visited themselves severely if they had known the truth that this lawless longing was the cry of idle nerve and muscle, frantic through disuse. What the clergyman wanted was to leave his books and his subdued demeanor for the hill-country, for the woods, where he could not only walk, but leap, run, shout, and wrestle, and sing at the full strength of his voice. The editor needed to leave his cigar and the midnight gas-light for a wherry race, or a jolly roll and tumble on the green. The woman, most of all, wanted a tent built for her on the shore, or on the dry heights of the pine forest, where she would have to take sun by day and balsamic air by night; where she would have to leap brooks, gather her own fire-wood, climb rocks, and laugh at her own mishaps. Or, if she were city-pent, she needed to take some child to the Park and play ball with it, and run as I saw an elegant girl dressed in velvet and furs run through Madison Square one winter day with her little sister. The nervous, capricious woman must be sent to swimming-school, or learn to throw quoits or jump the rope, to wrestle or to sing. There is nothing better for body and mind than learning to sing, with proper method, under a teacher who knows how to direct the force of the voice, to watch the strength, and expand the emotions at the same time. The health of many women begins to improve from the time they study music. Why? Because it furnishes an outlet for their feelings, and equally because singing exerts the lungs and muscles of the chest which lie inactive. The power for the highest as well as the lowest note is supplied by the bellows of the lungs, worked by the mighty muscles of the chest and sides. In this play the red blood goes to every tiny cell that has been white and faint for want of its food; the engorged brain and nervous centres where the blood has settled, heating and irritating them, are relieved; the head feels bright, the hands grow warm, the eyes clear, and the spirits lively. This is after singing strongly for half an hour. The same effect is gained by any other kind of brisk work that sets the lungs and muscles going, but as music brings emotion into play, and is a pleasure or a relief as it is melancholy or gay, it is preferable. The work that engages one’s interest as well as strength is always the best. Per contra, whatever one does thoroughly and with dispatch seldom continues distasteful. There is more than we see at a glance in the command, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” The reason given, because the time is short for all the culture and all the good work we wish to accomplish, is the apparent one; but the root of it lies in the necessities of our being. Only work done with our might will satisfy our energies and keep their balance. Half the women in the world are suffering from chronic unrest, morbid ambitions, and disappointments that would flee like morning mist before an hour of hearty, tiring work.
It is not so much matter what the work is, as how it is done.
The weak should take work up by degrees, working half an hour and resting, then going at it steadily again. It is better to work a little briskly and rest than to keep on the slow drag through the day. Learn not only to do things well, but to do them quickly. It is disgraceful to loiter and drone over one’s work. It is intolerable both in music and in life.
The body, like all slaves, has the power to react on its task-master. All mean passions appear born of diseased nerves. Was there ever a jealous woman who did not have dyspepsia, or a high-tempered one without a tendency to spinal irritation? Heathen tempers in young people are a sign of wrong health, and mothers should send for physician as well as priest to exorcise them. The great remedy for temper is—sleep. No child that sleeps enough will be fretful; and the same thing is nearly as true of children of larger growth. Not less than eight hours is the measure of sleep for a healthy woman under fifty. She may be able to get on with less, and do considerable work, either with mind or hands. But she could do so much more, to better satisfaction, by taking one or two hours more sleep, that she can not afford to lose it. Women who use their brains—teachers, artists, writers, and housewives (whose minds are as hard wrought in overseeing a family as those of any one who works with pen or pencil)—need all the sleep they can get. From ten to six, or, for those who do not want to lose theatres and lectures altogether, from eleven to seven, are hours not to be infringed upon by women who want clear heads and steady tempers. What they gain by working at night they are sure to lose next day, or the day after. It is impossible to put the case too strongly. Unless one has taken a narcotic, and sleeps too long, one should never be awakened. The body rouses itself when its demands are satisfied. A warm bath on going to bed is the best aid to sleep. People often feel drowsy in the evening about eight or nine o’clock, but are wide awake at eleven. They should heed the warning. The system needs more rest than it gets, and is only able to keep up by drawing on its reserve forces. Wakefulness beyond the proper time is a sign of ill health as much as want of appetite at meals—it is a pity that people are not as much alarmed by it. The brain is a more delicate organ than the stomach, and nothing so surely disorders it as want of sleep. In trouble or sorrow, light sedatives should be employed, like red lavender or the bromate of potassa, for the nerves have more to bear, and need all the rest they can get. The warm bath, I repeat, is better than either.