I have seen schoolgirls and typists with enough rigging of false hair and rusty wires upon their heads to give a strong man a constant headache and make him bald in a month. Your hair also falls out rapidly and constantly, but as you are blessed at the start with more luxuriant and more active growth in the scalp, it takes longer for the injury to show. But it is only a matter of time, not effect. Then there is another matter which you do not fully realize――all good and worthy men detest this ill-smelling and dead hair you pile upon your heads. You lose all your fresh appearance, all the looks of a maiden, all the proofs of innocence. Your complexion takes on the hue of the dead hair, and when the fashion passes you can never get back the shining, luxuriant tresses men so dearly admire. Men and youths may not have told you these truths, but way down in their hearts they will pick a girl for a wife or sweetheart who has not the smell of a dead Chinaman, or whose hair has been the abiding place for an old “mouse-trap” and left the mousy odors. The best way to insure a good head of hair is to wear it loose and free, without any artificial aids and appliances. Of course you may dress it any way it pleases you, but aside from pins it should never have any other pressure upon it. The hair should be washed frequently in water with a little powdered borax, but remember you wash the hair only to clean the scalp, nothing should be applied to the hair directly. There is another fashion which has made many a girl suffer from headaches, thinned her hair and injured her complexion. This is the wearing of tight collars, neck bands, and those torturing things with points you wear stuck right up under the ears. I forget now what you call them, and I won’t tell you what I call them, for it would not sound nice to polite ears. But if you keep on wearing them a man will be able to say almost anything without you being able to hear him; for you will be deaf. The reason these tight collars do so much injury is that they compress the arteries and veins of the neck, which at this part of the body are near the surface. They are large, full-blooded vessels and bring the blood to and return it from brain and scalp. I have known girls to faint simply from the compression due to tight collars or bands around the neck. They will almost invariably cause headaches, and every one of you know of the great relief you derive from taking them off and putting on a loose wrap or dressing sack. I have known women to suffer violent pains in the head, then dizziness and final collapse, by preventing a free circulation through the brain. The same blood vessels supply the skin, and when these are stopped from nourishing the skin what do you get? A poor, pale and finally diseased skin, a starved face. CHAPTER V NERVES AND THE NERVOUS GIRL