These added words were as true as the proverb itself. There is always someone, amongst our many acquaintances and kinsfolk, who has a good memory for dates, and who can refer to the number of Life's milestones we have passed with unerring accuracy. I asked you if there could be anything more pitiable and contemptible than the sight of an elderly woman trying to defy time and age by such means as I have named? I will answer my own question, "Yes, there is. The sight of a girl who, possessing youth, health, and the share of good looks and attractiveness which must accompany these two things, is ever striving to improve Nature's handiwork by the use of unnatural means." Believe me, my dear girl friends, the sight of a young face disfigured by artificial colouring and unnaturally whitened by powder, of blackened eyebrows and eyelashes, together with similar shams, excites in my mind a feeling of true motherly regret. I love girls too well to say hard things or to speak of contempt for such practices; though they ought to be contemptible in the eyes of all pure and right-minded girls. One associates the use of them with small minds and natures whose chief end and aim are to gratify personal vanity and attract admiration, instead of striving to win respect by the exercise of far nobler powers. Can any girl be so self-deceived as to think she will win honest affection by such means? She may win it in spite of them, but it will be because the one who gives it is able to discover something better and more deserving of love beneath this miserable upper crust of deception. One is always ready to recognise, with gratitude, even a mistaken attempt made by the young with a view of giving pleasure to others. But I am sure that self-pleasing and the gratification of vanity are, in nearly every case, the incentives to such displays as I have condemned. In looking round me, I have been struck with the fact that some of the girls who use paint, powder, and what are, I am informed, known under the general name of "make-ups," are just those to whom Nature has been specially liberal in the gift of beauty. Beauty, when joined to vanity, has an insatiable longing to add to its attractions. It is more than conscious of all that it has, but it is never satisfied, because it craves to combine, in its own person, the attractions of every style which is, from time to time, commended in its hearing. Hence all these useless and foolish efforts to improve on Nature's handiwork. Do not misunderstand me so far as to think I condemn the use of many little toilet accessories, which add greatly both to comfort and health. It would be insulting to the good sense of my girls, if I were to specify what things are lawful and useful, and what are contemptible and to be avoided.