An excellent preparation for bathing is Bacheville’s _Eau des Odalisques_. The French recommend it highly for frictions, lotions, and baths. It is made in quantity for free use after this recipe: Two pints of alcohol, one of rose-water, half a drachm of Mexican cochineal, four ounces of soluble cream of tartar, five drachms of liquid balsam of Peru, five drachms of dry balsam of the same; vanilla, one drachm; pellitory root, one and a half ounces; storax, one and a half ounces; galanga, one ounce; root of galanga, one and a half ounces; dried orange peel, two drachms; cinnamon, essence of mint, root of Bohemian angelica, and dill seed, each one drachm. Infuse eight days, and filter. For lotions, add one spoonful of this to six of water. It is also useful for freshening the mouth, adding twenty-four drops of it to four teaspoonfuls of tepid water. For diseased gums, double the dose, and gargle with it several times a day. The _Pâte Axérasive_ of Bazin, the celebrated perfumer, has the distinction of being highly commended by the French Royal Academy of Medicine. It is better for toilet use than soaps which contain so much alkali. Take powder of bitter almonds, eight ounces; oil of the same, twelve ounces; _savon vert_ of the perfumers, eight ounces; spermaceti, four ounces; soap powder, four ounces; cinnabar, two drachms; essence of rose, one drachm. Melt the soap and spermaceti with the oil in a water-bath, add the powder, and mix the whole in a marble mortar. It forms a kind of paste, which softens and whitens the skin better than any soap known. Make toilet waters and pastes of this kind in quantity, as they improve with age. It costs about one fourth as much to prepare them as to buy the same quantity at the perfumer’s, and one has the advantage of a finer article. Do not use cheap soap for the toilet. Such is almost always made of rancid or half-putrid fat, combined with strong alkalies, which dry and crack the skin, sometimes causing dangerous sores by the poisonous matter they introduce from vile grease. _Never_ allow such soap to touch the flesh of an infant. To do so is little better than absolute cruelty. White soaps are the safest, as they are only made of purified fat. The feet should be washed every night and morning as regularly as the hands. It preserves their strength and elasticity, and helps to keep their shape. What person of refinement can take any pleasure in looking at her own feet presenting the common appearance of distortion by shoes _too tight in the wrong place_, and the dry, hardened skin of partial neglect? One’s foot is as proper an object of pride and complacency as a shapely hand. But where in a thousand would a sculptor find one that was a pleasure to contemplate, like that of the Princess Pauline Bonaparte, whose lovely foot was modeled in marble for the delight of all the world who have seen it?