tighter than is needed for this will do harm, not only by keeping the muscles idle, and so weakening them, but by compressing the abdominal viscera, and thus producing numerous evils. There is a game children play called “wring the towel,” in which two clasp hands and whirl their arms over their heads without losing hold, that every woman ought to practice to keep her muscles flexible. Hardly any exercise could be devised which would give play to so many muscles at once. A woman ought to be as lithe from head to heel as a willow wand, not for the sake of beauty only, but for the varied duties and functions she must perform. It would be an artistic feat to take Christiana through a course of baths, diet, sun-sittings, and open-air walks, to show her to herself. The oleander glow on firm cheeks, the eye of light, the tread of Diana, the buoyancy of body that fosters buoyancy of mind and spirits, would please her with herself. How dexterously Nature inserts the reward of beauty before the self-denials needed to gain health! A thoroughly healthy woman never is unbeautiful. She is full of life, and vivacity shines in her face and manner, while her magnetism attracts every creature who comes within its influence. CHAPTER X. The Bonniest Kate in Christendom.--A Word to Mothers and Aunts.--Different Vanities.--The Sorrows of Ugly Women.--Recipes of an Ancient Beauty.--Sand Wash.--Color for the Nails.--Embrocation for the Hands.--Soap to Bleach the Arms.--Freckle Lotions.--Artistic Enthusiasm at the Toilet. Was the last chapter too much of a sermon on Christiana’s breakfast? You think so, Kate, who are longing to learn some art that may make you the bonniest Kate in Christendom. You say your hands are rough and unsightly, your hair grows where you do not want it, and is none too thick where it ought to be. Your eyebrows are bushy--a most unfeminine trait, that makes you look fierce as a lamb with mustaches. You don’t seem lovely to yourself, and this consciousness makes you stiff and shy in your manner. Somebody is to blame for this state of things. Either your mother, or your aunt, or the lady principal of the school where you studied, ought to have taken you in hand before you were fourteen, and showed you the remedies for these defects that were to affect your spirits and comfort in after-life. A girl should be taught to take care of her skin and hair just as she is to hold her dress out of the dust, and not to crumple her sash when she sits down. One thing will not make her vain more than another. There are many vanities to be found in women’s character. One is vain of knowing three languages, one of her Sunday-school devotion, another of her pattern temper, and one of her pretty face. Of all these errors, the last is most endurable. Every attraction filched from a girl by neglect or design is so much stolen from her dowry that never can be replaced.