I have a pet swift—the biggest kind of swallow that visits this country—but, being a pet, he never leaves me more than twelve hours at a time, and in that brief space he may have flown one thousand miles, and perhaps visited the rooms of more than one hundred of my girl readers. He can speak various languages almost as well as Rougemont, and a little nearer to the truth, and I sit up to listen to him sometimes till long past twelve at night.
Dinna forget to look out for my birdie. He can see you when you little know of it. But one thing which he has recently told me is that a very large number of you have given up your bath, to which I fondly fancied I had inured you. This vexed me a deal; but you will promise to begin it again very soon, won't you? It is the greatest invigorator of the muscles and nervous system in the world. So "dinna forget."
Colds and Coughs.
Dinna forget that colds and coughs are rampant about this time of the year. I am writing these lines long before Christmas, and I have been prophesying for England an open winter. But dinna forget that a green Yule makes a fat kirkyard, and colds are more easily caught from the green cold earth and the damp cold winds than even from frost and snow. The more you are out-of-doors in snow-time—which ought to be glow-time—the better you will be, provided you are not too warmly and heavily clad and do not wear india-rubber clothing in any shape or form.
When a cold comes on, take a warm drink or posset of some kind at bed-time and eight to ten grains of Dover's powder. Get thus a good sweat and a good sleep. Then take an aperient (apenta water) next morning, but I advise you to remain in bed till eventide. This is one of the best ways of cutting short a cold that I know of.
But if coughing continues, you must see a doctor. Coughs may be far more dangerous than you think, and may lead to mischief. Dinna forget that death respects neither beauty nor sex. Indeed, it is often the sweetest flowers of earth that leave us first.
Neuralgia.
A great many young ladies from seven to seventy complain about this terrible trouble in some form or another. If it is what we call hemi-crania, engaging, if I may use the term, the whole half of the face and head, it may proceed from a bad tooth, or from what is the worst sort of a tooth anyone could be plagued with—a tooth with one small hole in the side. Have this seen to as soon as the first attack has gone. Probably a clever dentist may be able to fill it for you. Some girls go hurrying away to the dentist at once, have gas, and have it out. Such a pity, for as you get older what a blessing you will find your own teeth!
Thank Heaven, I have never worn a false tooth, but it strikes me the sensation can be far from agreeable. If one uses the toothbrush, with a good disinfectant powder, such as borax or charcoal, followed by a rinse of water tinged red with permanganate of potash (and this is usually sold as Condy's fluid), she will have teeth that will last as long as they're wanted.
But what I wish to tell you here is this: apart from actual decay of a tooth and consequent irritation of the nerve, a girl need never have facial neuralgia, nor sciatica, nor any other "algia" if she but lives in such a way as to make herself hardy as a heather stem. Dinna forget that.