HINTS ABOUT BEAUTY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 24, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 46.

HINTS ABOUT BEAUTY.

TRUE beauty rests on plain living and high thinking, on blood, bearing, and brains.

The gospel of relaxing, of "letting go" of one's self at times, is essential to facial beauty. The nervous system, like the violin, must not be kept always at concert pitch.

Beauty means harmony, balance, the mental fire of sensibility, as well as bodily fascination. Banish fretting, trivial perturbation, scowling, whining, wailing, excessive laughter, and pointless smiling.

In the first place, health is all important. Flesh texture and tint depend upon it. A complexion lacking luster, plumpness, and elasticity shows a lack somewhere in the vital or nutritive system. A mild diet, gentle temperature, good digestion, outdoor exercise, sleep, and a tranquil mind pertain to loveliness. Perfect beauty cannot exist except there is interest in something, some occupation or labor.

Every person should sleep alone. A buoyant girl will be rendered irritable, ill, and imbecile by sleeping with a sullen, morose woman.

If a girl sits down to a potato and pickles, strong tea, pies, cakes, ices, and fiery condiments, she will not hold her beauty. As a result, when the girl is twenty her eyes are dull, teeth yellow, gums pale, lips wan, flesh flaccid, and skin unyielding. Recourse is had to padding, face washes, stains, and belladonna.

The diet, while generous, must be temperate. Peppered soups, stews, game, patés, ragouts, and spices are not good for the complexion. What is termed the epicurean woman will have, before she is thirty, a blotched face and flabby flesh. Aerated and natural spring water should be the daily beverage.

A great deal of beauty at low cost can be obtained through the plentiful use of water, sunlight, and open-air exercise. Frequent bathing is a healthful luxury, especially with the addition of sea salt.

How many women know how to walk? Observe them in the street or entering a drawing room. One shambles, another slouches as if her shoes were down at the heel; but most of them dive, straining every muscle, ploughing along with strenuous effort, like a ship in a high sea and facing head winds.

A perceptible swing of the body should be manifest with every step—that is, advance all of one side at the same time, with a slight turn right and left of the shoulders as the corresponding foot is projected.

The highest beauty is the beauty of expression, and the cultivation of this requires the crushing out of envy, hatred, malice, and all low motives and passions.—Science Siftings.