_Beards._--I am for beards out and out, because I think the Maker of the beard was and is. This is reason enough; but there are many others. The misery of shaving, its expense, its consumption of time,--a very corporation existing for no other purpose but to shave mankind. Campbell the poet, who had always a bad razor, I suppose, and was late of rising, said he believed the man of civilization who lived to be sixty had suffered more pain in littles every day in shaving than a woman with a large family had from her lyings-in. This would be hard to prove; but it is a process that never gets pleasanter by practice; and then the waste of time and temper,--the ugliness of being ill or unshaven. Now, we can easily see advantages in it; the masculine gender is intended to be more out of doors, and more in all weathers than the smooth-chinned ones, and this protects him and his Adam's apple from harm. It acts as the best of all respirators to the mason and the east-wind. Besides, it is a glory; and it must be delightful to have and to stroke a natural beard, not one like bean-stalks or a bottle-brush, but such a beard as Abraham's or Abd-el-Kader's. It is the beginning ever to cut, that makes all the difference. I hazard a theory, that no hair of the head or beard should ever be cut, or needs it, any more than the eyebrows or eyelashes. The finest head of hair I know is one which was never cut. It is not too long; it is soft and thick. The secret where to stop growing is in the end of the native untouched hair. If you cut it off, the poor hair does not know when to stop; and if our eyebrows were so cut, they might be made to hang over our eyes, and be wrought into a veil. Besides, think of the waste of substance of the body in hewing away so much hair every morning, and encouraging an endless rotation of crops! Well, then, I go in for the beards of the next generation, the unshorn beings whose beards will be wagging when we are away; but of course they must be clean. But how are we to sup our porridge and kail? Try it when young, when there is just a shadowy down on the upper lip, and no fears but they will do all this "elegantly" even. Nature is slow and gentle in her teaching even the accomplishment of the spoon. And as for women's hair, don't plaster it with scented and sour grease, or with any grease; it has an oil of its own. And don't tie up your hair tight, and make it like a cap of iron over your skull. And why are your ears covered? You hear all the worse, and they are not the cleaner. Besides, the ear is beautiful in itself, and plays its own part in the concert of the features. Go back to the curls, some of you, and try in everything to dress as it becomes you, and as you become; not as that fine lady, or even your own Tibbie or Grizzy chooses to dress, it may be becomingly to her. Why shouldn't we even in dress be more ourselves than somebody or everybody else?