But there are legitimate methods of securing greater beauty. The chief of these is health. Without good health there can be no real beauty, no beautiful complexion, no bright and sparkling eyes, and no power to please others or make others happy. One cannot bestow upon those around them that which they do not possess themselves. It is girls like this—girls who may be classed with that great army, the only middling—who, instead of endeavouring to set themselves right by the aid of judicious living and everything that conduces to health, are for ever hunting among the trashy advertisements of cheap ladies' papers for cosmetics that shall not only make them beautiful for a day, but keep them beautiful for all time.
Very catchy are many of those advertisements to the eyes of the simple and the ignorant, and they are always tastefully illustrated. In a country better governed than ours, those advertising quack-women, who charge such awful prices for specialities that are simply worse than want, would soon find themselves inside the four walls of a prison. Pray take my warning, girls, and keep your money in your purses.
Do not forget, however, that regularity in living, temperance in eating, daily pleasant exercise, no spurting if you ride, plenty of fruit, and the bath, using the mildest soaps are the passports to health and happiness; and beauty cannot exist without these latter.
[LETTERS FROM A LAWYER.]
PART IV.
The Temple.
My dear Dorothy,—Before going away for your summer holiday, I should advise you to put all your valuables, such as your silver tea-set, etc., into a strong iron box and get Gerald to deposit the same at his bank, where it will be perfectly safe.
The bank will not give you a receipt for the contents of the box, because they will not make themselves responsible for property which they are taking care of gratuitously; but they will give you an acknowledgment for the box itself, which is quite sufficient for your purpose.
The landlady at Southsea had no justification for writing and telling you that you could not have the rooms, which you had previously engaged, for another week yet, because her present lodgers were staying on in them. She has broken her contract with you—which was to let her rooms to you from a certain date for a specified amount—so that if you find it more convenient to leave town at the date you originally fixed, you need not wait upon the Southsea landlady's pleasure. The contract to take her rooms is at an end, and you need not go to her at all unless it suits you to do so.