I have spoken at length on the topic of walking, because its importance as an art of grace can not be overrated, and because it has a still deeper bearing on women’s health. The training which secures an elegant carriage is precisely that which counteracts the tendency to a dozen fatal relaxations at different points of the frame, and prevents their appearance. No one ought to say that walking brings on the disorders which blanch and wither feminine life. The cause is the fatal, inherited weakness of constitution, shown by either undue redness or pallor, by indolence or excitability, which is a slow decay from its first breath, and poisons the hopes and the loveliness of so many women. These doomed beings must work out their own salvation, and make themselves anew in the effort. The weaknesses would develop whether they walked or not. The care should be to adjust exercise and nourishment, stimulus and rest, in due proportion. But the weak woman must have separate counsel, for she by no means comes under the head of these unpremeditated consultations. CHAPTER IV. N. P. Willis as a Critic of Beauty.--The Perfume of the Presence.--Charm of Good Circulation.--Chills are Incipient Congestion.--Paper Clothing.--Luxuries of the Bath.--A Substitute for Sea-Baths.--To Secure Fragrant Breath.--Delicate Dentifrices.--Fine Cologne.--A List of Fragrance. When Willis died, American society lost its great personal critic. No other writer shows such insight into the subtile elements of women’s beauty, or speaks so assuredly on points of mere outward attraction. That gentle and gracious critic who blesses the order of Old Bachelors dissects feminine manner with zest, but is not given to that mention of ear-locks and finger-tips which made “People I have Met” such a conserve of hints for the dressing-table. It is a pity such a connoisseur of feminine graces could not have taken half a hundred distinguished specimens into his training to show the world such women as fill the ideal of a refined man of the world. Willis was susceptible to beauty wherever he found it: a perfect ear on the head of a plain country girl would not miss the glance of this artist, and he betrays what single charms may rivet the regard of a man of taste a dozen times in those glorious sketches we never hope to see excelled.