As nice care should be given to feet as to hands, beginning with a bath of fifteen minutes in hot soap and water, followed by scraping with an ivory knife, and rubbing with a ball of sand-stone, which will be found most useful for a dozen toilet purposes. The nails may be left to take care of themselves, with constant bathing and well-fitting shoes, unless they have begun to grow into the flesh, when all to be done is to scrape a groove lengthwise in each corner of the nail. The whole foot should be anointed with purified olive-oil or oil of sweet almonds after such a bath. A pair of stockings should be drawn on at night to preserve the bedclothes from grease-spots. The oil will soak off the old skin, and wear away the scaly tissue about the nails, while it renders the soles as soft and pliant as those of a young child. A daily change of stockings is as desirable for those who walk out as a fresh handkerchief every morning--but how many people consider it necessary? It may sound audacious to suggest that when laundry-work is an item, a lady would show her ingrain refinement by washing her own Balbriggan hose as truly as by stinting herself to two pair a week on account of washer-women’s bills. As for the vulgarity of wearing colored stockings “because they show dirt less,” it is to be repudiated, save in the case of children, who are quite capable of going through with a box of white stockings in a day, and looking none the cleaner for it at the end. Our bootmakers are in fault about the lining of shoes, which ought to be changeable when soiled. Soiled, indeed! When are common shoes ever clean within? Our manufacturers are the opposite of the French, whose workmen wear fresh linen aprons, and wash their hands every hour, for fear of soiling the white kid linings at which they sew. The time will come when we will find it as shocking to our ideas to wear out a pair of boots without putting in new lining as we think the habits of George the First’s time, when maids of honor went without washing their faces for a week, and people wore out their linen without the aid of a laundress. Cleanliness means health in every case, and a plea must be offered for those neglected members, that only find favor in our eyes by making themselves as diminutive as possible. CHAPTER XVI. “The Leaves are Full of Joy.”--Nobility of the Body.--Its Possibilities.--Brain and Heart Dependent on it.--Physical Culture Imperative in America.--Our Contempt of Health.--Easier to be Magnificent than Clean.--Distilled Water for Every Use.--Substitute for Stills.--Vapor and Sulphur Baths.--Bran Baths.--Oatmeal for the Hands.--Frequency of Baths.--Remedies for Hepatic Spots.