Christiana is over thirty--no reason in the least why she should not be as admired as a three days’ rose, for one of the most beautiful women in New York, whom every one is infatuated with, is over sixty. Yet nobody thinks of Christiana’s looks, for the simple reason that she has given up thinking of them herself--believing her poor skin can not be improved, nor the stiff, high carriage of her shoulders be changed. The depth of her eyes and her really good color are lost with these defects. To judge how the remedies should be applied, scrutinize her entire mode of living. Sunrise, in January or June, and she is not up! This will never serve a candidate for beauty. The first rays of the sun, the purity of early air, have as potent an effect on the complexion as the noon rays on the webs of linen in the bleaching-ground. By all means, if one must rob daylight for sleep, take the hours from ten to three, but see the fires in the east from out-of-doors, even if your head touched the pillow only two hours before. I don’t believe in any special morality in getting up early, but I do know its benefits on nerves and circulation of the blood. There is a tonic in the dew-cool air, a lingering of night’s romance, that stirs while it soothes the blood like a fine magnetic hand. But getting up and staying in the house won’t improve one’s complexion. How much of her rose-and-lily face the English peasant woman owes to her walk to the reaping-field at daybreak is well known. After the first soft days of February and March there is nothing to hinder Christiana from reading her prayer-book or morning paper on the porch in the sunlight, if she choose to do this rather than rake the dead leaves from the grass, sweep the steps, or do something to stir her laggard blood. If it is cold, let her plant herself at the sunniest window, sew, run her machine, lounge, and eat there, till she is no more afraid of sunshine than of any other blood relation. Our women want to imitate French sense, and sit in the balconies and parks to do their work. When they lose the detestable vice of self-consciousness that saps American well-being in all ways, they will be able to live at their casements, sewing, singing, reading, as thoughtless and unnoticed as the white doves soaring above them where the sunshine is widest. It is matter of custom merely.