Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/209

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in Paris, you know—there are lionnes who still have recourse to this extraordinary procedure to heighten their charms. We are obliged to confess that it would doubtless be efficient, for the albumen in the flesh would soften the epidermis and loosen its scales. But who would be willing to go to such an extreme, when the object may be attained by cleanlier and more agreeable means? Or who would follow the example of Madame Vestris, who, if rumor did not traduce her, was wont to cover her cheeks and forehead every night, with what butchers call a "leaf" or "flare," from an animal freshly killed?


PROTECTING THE COMPLEXION—MASKS AND VEILS.

Sun and air give a ruddy, healthy glow to the face, but they also roughen and brown it. They are unfriendly to the delicate shades of pink and white, which are the pride or the envy of many a belle. Therefore from earliest times shields of various sorts have been devised.

In the Orient and in Spanish countries, women of the better class rarely go abroad except in thick veils, with perhaps apertures cut for the eyes. In Egypt, the little girls of eight and ten years will find some old rag to conceal their face from a stranger, though they leave exposed every inch of the rest of their body.

The custom arose not so much from marital jealousy and rigid discipline, as from coquetry, and a desire to