I thought that I might state as an axiom that beauty is impossible without a fair amount of health. That for instance, a beautiful complexion was incompatible with a very serious disease. But I find that here I am mistaken. "I want a complexion like a girl in a decline," a woman said to me the other day. I wonder if she had ever seen a girl in "a decline." To me the dull purple cheeks and lips of advanced consumption are most ghastly. Other women strive after a dead white face, and poison themselves with arsenic to try to obtain it. The beautiful shades of red and white which are admired by most persons are, however, impossible without good health. Late hours, indigestion, lack of exercise and the use of cosmetics will destroy a good complexion, and when once it has gone it is by no means easy to regain. Of course I do not know, but I strongly suspect that every girl who has a good complexion is too careful of her appearance to need any of the crude hints that I can give to her less favoured sisters about improving their complexions. The best complexions to be found are not in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair but in the slums of Whitechapel. Many dirty little ragamuffins have far finer complexions than any of the leaders of fashion. This is sufficient proof that soap and water are not the causes of a fine cheek. Rather is it the outdoor life, the not too liberal diet, the absence of stimulants, the early hours and the loose clothing of the urchin that give her her good complexion. All soap used for washing the face should be of fine quality. You should never wash your face in very hot water. You should not go out in a wind without a veil, and you should never lace tightly if you wish to have a good complexion. When the face gets rough, as it is apt to do after a walk in the wind, a very little glycerine and rosewater or glycerine and cucumber will help to keep the face clear and soft. Cosmetics are undoubtedly a fertile cause of the bad complexions so common among the upper middle classes, and though by no means all cosmetics are harmful, you should be very careful what you put on your face. Freckles are very annoying to some girls. They are caused, as you doubtless know, by the sun. It is not the heat, but the light of the sun that causes freckles, and it is the violet of the light that causes them. The colour red absorbs the violet rays of the sun, and therefore a red veil or a red parasol should be used by women who are very prone to become freckled. I am not going to say that a red parasol will entirely prevent freckling, but it does very materially lessen it. Many persons, who would otherwise have a good complexion, are marred by what are called "birth-marks." These are of three kinds--moles, port wine stains and "spider nævi."