How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits / Embracing an Exposition of the Principles of Good Manners; Useful Hints on the Care of the Person, Eating, Drinking, Exercise, Habits, Dress, Self-culture, and Behavior at Home; the Etiquette of Salutations, Introductions, Receptions, Visits, Dinners, Evening Parties, Conversation, Letters, Presents, Weddings, Funerals, the Street, the Church, Places of Amusement, Traveling, Etc., with Illustrative Anecdotes, a Chapter on Love and Courtship, and Rules of Order for Debating Societies

by Samuel R. Wells

"Cleanliness is akin to godliness," it is said. It is not less closely related to gentility. First of all, then, keep yourself scrupulously clean—not your hands and face merely, but your whole person, from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot. Silk stockings may hide dirty feet and ankles from the eye, but they often reveal themselves to another sense, when the possessor little dreams of such an exposure. It is far better to dress coarsely and out of fashion and be strictly clean, than to cover a dirty skin with the finest and richest clothing. A coarse shirt or a calico dress is not necessarily vulgar, but dirt is essentially so. We do not here refer, of course, to one's condition while engaged in his or her industrial occupation. Soiled hands and even a begrimed face are badges of honor in the field, the workshop, or the kitchen, but in a country in which soap and water abound, there is no excuse for carrying them into the parlor or the dining-room.

A clean skin is as essential to health, beauty, and personal comfort as it is to decency; and without health and that perfect freedom from physical disquiet which comes only from the normal action of all the functions of the bodily organs, your behavior can never be satisfactory to yourself or agreeable to others. Let us urge you, then, to give this matter your first attention.

1. The Daily Bath.

To keep clean you must bathe frequently. In the first place you should wash the whole body with pure soft water every morning on rising from your bed, rubbing it till dry with a coarse towel, and afterward using friction with the hands. If you have not been at all accustomed to cold bathing, commence with tepid water, lowering the temperature by degrees till that which is perfectly cold becomes agreeable. In warm weather, comfort and cleanliness alike require still more frequent bathing. Mohammed made frequent ablutions a religious duty; and in that he was right. The rank and fetid odors which exhale from a foul skin can hardly be neutralized by the sweetest incense of devotion.

2. Soap and Water.

But the daily bath of which we have spoken is not sufficient. In addition to the pores from which exudes the watery fluid called perspiration, the skin is furnished with innumerable minute openings, known as the sebaceous follicles, which pour over its surface a thin limpid oil anointing it and rendering it soft and supple; but also causing the dust as well as the effete matter thrown out by the pores to adhere, and, if allowed to accumulate, finally obstructing its functions and causing disease. It also, especially in warm weather, emits an exceedingly disagreeable odor. Pure cold water will not wholly remove these oily accumulations. The occasional use of soap and warm or tepid water is therefore necessary; but all washings with soapy or warm water should be followed by a thorough rinsing with pure cold water. Use good, fine soap. The common coarser kinds are generally too strongly alkaline and have an unpleasant effect upon the skin.

3. The Feet.

The feet are particularly liable to become offensively odoriferous, especially when the perspiration is profuse. Frequent washings with cold water, with the occasional use of warm water and soap, are absolutely necessary to cleanliness.