cost little more than one-tenth of the price the consumer pays. We purpose to show the readers of this book how to have, in most instances, better articles than those they buy, for a small percentage of the cost. To do this, we have, by our own personal investigation, gathered a number of valuable recipes together, and have paid for the privilege of using them.
We give in “The Ladies' Book of Useful Information” twelve recipes which have never before been published, and which, if you once possess, you will never wish to be without, as they are truly valuable secrets.
The list is as follows: Healing salve; Magnetic croup cure; Worm elixir; Brilliant self-shining stove polish; Wonderful starch enamel; Royal washing powder; Magic annihilator; I X L baking powder; Electric powder; French polish or dressing for leather; Artificial honey.
It also contains a list of all the poisons and their antidotes. It describes the symptoms of poisoning and how to proceed in each case.
The Ladies' Book
OF
USEFUL
INFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
PERSONAL BEAUTY.
Treating of the Care of the Skin, Hair, Teeth, and Eyes, so as to have each arrive at the highest degree of beauty of which each is capable.
A great object of importance, of care to every lady, is the care of her complexion. There is nothing more pleasing to the eye than a delicate, smooth skin; and besides being pleasing to the eye, is an evidence of health, and gives additional grace to the most regular features. The choice of soaps has considerable influence in promoting and maintaining this desideratum. These should invariably be selected of the finest kinds, and used sparingly, and never with cold water, for the alkali which, more or less, mingles in the composition of all soaps has an undoubted tendency to irritate a delicate skin; warm water excites a gentle perspiration, thereby assisting the skin to throw off those natural secretions which, if allowed to remain, are likely to accumulate below the skin and produce roughness, pimples, and even eruptions of an obstinate and unpleasant character. Those soaps which ensure a moderate fairness and flexibility of the skin are the most desirable for regular use.
Pomades, when properly prepared, contribute in an especial manner to preserve the softness and elasticity of the skin, their effect being of an emollient and congenial nature; and, moreover, they can be applied on retiring to rest, when their effects are not liable to be disturbed by the action of the atmosphere, muscular exertions or nervous influences.
The use of paints has been very correctly characterized as “a species of corporeal hypocrisy as subversive of delicacy of mind as it is of the natural complexion,” and has been, of late years, discarded at the toilette of every lady.
The use of cosmetics has been common in all ages and in every land. Scripture itself records the painting of Jezebel; and Ezekiel, the prophet, speaks of the eye-painting common among the women; and Jeremiah, of rending the face with painting—a most expressive term for the destruction of beauty by such means. For the surest destroyers of real beauty are its simulators. The usurper destroys the rightful sovereign.
That paint can ever deceive people, or really add beauty for more than the duration of an acted charade or play, when “distance lends enchantment to the view,” is a delusion; but it is one into which women of all times and nations have fallen—from the painted Indian squaw to the rouged and powdered denizen of London or Paris.
Milk was the favorite cosmetic of the ladies of ancient Rome. They applied plasters of bread and ass's milk to their faces at night, and washed them off with milk in the morning.
As a cosmetic, milk would be harmless, but we doubt its power of improving the skin. As a beverage, no doubt, it whitens the complexion more than any other food.
But before we speak of improving the complexion, it will be well to explain to our readers the nature and properties of the skin.
This is what an American physician has recently told us about it:—
THE SKIN—ITS BEAUTY, USES, CONSTRUCTION, MANAGEMENT, ETC.
Every person knows what the skin is, its external appearance, and its general properties; but there are many of my readers who may not be aware of its peculiar and wonderful construction, its compound character, and its manifold uses. It not merely acts as an organ of sense, and a protection to the surface of the body, but it clothes it, as it were, in a garment of the most delicate texture and of the most surpassing loveliness. In perfect health it is gifted with exquisite sensibility, and while it possesses the softness of velvet, and exhibits the delicate hues of the lily, the carnation, and the rose, it is nevertheless gifted with extraordinary strength and power of resisting external injury, and is not only capable of repairing, but of actually renewing itself. Though unprotected with hair, wool or fur, or with feathers or scales, as with the brute creation, the human skin is furnished with innumerable nerves, which endow it with extreme susceptibility to all the various changes of climate and of weather, and prompt the mind to provide suitable materials, in the shape of clothing, to shield it under all the circumstances in which it can be placed.
The importance of the due exposure of the body to daylight or sunlight cannot be too strongly insisted on. Light and warmth are powerful agents in the economy of our being. The former especially is an operative agent on which health, vigor, and even beauty itself, depend. Withdraw the light of the sun from the organic world, and all its various beings and objects would languish and gradually lose those charms which are now their characteristics. In its absence, the carnation tint leaves the cheek of beauty, the cherry hue of the lips changes to a leaden-purple, the eyes become glassy and expressionless, and the complexion assumes an unnatural, cadaverous appearance that speaks of sickness, night and death. So powerful is daylight, so necessary to our well-being, that even its partial exclusion, or its insufficient admission to our apartments, soon tells its tale in the feeble health, the liability to the attacks of disease, and the pallid features (vacant and sunken, or flabby, pendent and uninviting) of their inmates. Even the aspect of the rooms in which we pass most of our time, and the number and extent of their windows, is perceptible, by the trained eye, in the complexion and features of those that occupy them. So in the vegetable world—the bright and endlessly varied hues of flowers, and their sweet perfumes—even their very production—depend on sunlight. In obscure light plants grow lanky and become pale and feeble. They seldom produce flowers, and uniformly fail to ripen their seeds. In even partial darkness the green hue of their foliage gradually pales and disappears, and new growths, when they appear, are blanched or colorless.
The best method of keeping the skin clean and healthy, by ablution and baths, may here be alluded to. The use of these, and the washing of the skin that forms part of the daily duties of the toilet, appear to be very simple matters, but writers on the subject differ in opinion as to the methods to be followed to render them perfect cleansers of the skin. Some of them regard the use of soap and water applied in the form of lather with the hands, and afterwards thoroughly removed from the skin by copious affusions, rinsing or sluicing with water, or immersion in it, as the best method. This is probably the case when the skin is not materially dirty, or its pores or surface obstructed or loaded with the residual solid matter of the perspiration or its own unctuous exudation and exuviæ. To remove these completely and readily, something more than simple friction with the smooth hand is generally required. In such cases the use of a piece of flannel or serge, doubled and spread across the hand, or of a mitten of the same material, will be most ready and effective. Friction with this—first with soap, and afterwards with water to wash the soap off—will be found to cleanse the skin more thoroughly and quickly than any other method, and, by removing the worn-out portion of its surface, to impart to it a healthy glow and hue that is most