The ugly-girl papers : $b or, Hints for the toiletPower, S. D. (Susan Dunning)
Science
The ugly-girl papers : $b or, Hints for the toilet
Power, S. D. (Susan Dunning)
Beauty, Personal; Women -- Health and hygiene
You remember one of his heroines was remarkable for the perfume
which exhaled from her person. We are not to suppose that this most
fascinating gift was due to Coudray’s sachets, or to hedyosima on her
hair. From repeated experience, verified by that of very discerning and
sensitive persons, it is affirmed that certain people of fine organism
and perfect health have a fragrance belonging to their presence like
scent to a flower. One of the most powerful feminine novelists of
the day said that she always knew when a favorite brother had been
in a room by the slight indefinable perfume that followed him. His
pillow breathed it, and his easy-chair, and it was perceived even by
comparative strangers. I have known persons innocent of using perfume,
whose fragrant presence was recognized by every one who came near them.
In all cases this was accompanied by a bodily condition of perfect
health and much magnetic attraction. This may be named the first in
that list of subtile personal properties which constitute the strongest
and most enduring of physical charms, and which are not discussed with
any proportion to their potency. We do not stop to ask what pleases us;
refinement attracts, sweetness detains us, and we are only too glad to
lie under the spell.
May a plain woman reach her hand for these gifts of pleasing? Surely.
They were meant to be nature’s compensation for the lack of chiseled
features and ruffled tresses. To reach this subtile refinement requires
such preparation as the virgins underwent for the court of Ahasuerus:
“Six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors”--if not
in kind, yet in care.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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