the enemy, if he is not a fool to himself.” He was so far delivered from his malady as to indulge in the forbidden articles of food; but says, “I have to keep careful watch, so that if I choose to spend a day or two with Dives, I must not forget to devote the next to Lazarus.” No medicine was given with this diet save a volatile alkali draught in the morning during the first month. This was probably the bromide of ammonia, which is of great use in reducing an over-amount of flesh. CHAPTER XVIII. A Letter.--Trials of a Plain Woman.--The Best Husband in the World.--Burdock Wash for the Hair.--For Children’s Hair.--Oil of Mace as a Stimulant.--To Restore Color to the Hair.--Sperm-oil a Powerful Hair Restorer.--The Cheapest Hair-Dye.--Cure for Chilblains.--Loose Shoes the Cause of Corns.--Pyroligneous Acid for Corns.--Turpentine and Carbolic Acid for Soft Corns. Among inquiries not seldom repeated is an urgent demand for a prescription to keep the hair from coming out. The following letter will be acceptable to many readers. “I was emphatically one of the ‘ugly girls,’ being of a very large figure, and inheriting thin hair; otherwise I suited myself well enough. But oh! the agonies I have suffered through my personal deficiencies. Now, with a happy home of my own and the best husband in the world, I can smile at the old distress. Yet it was no less real, and I can pity the ugly girls as nobody but one who has ‘been there’ can. “My hair began coming out when I was just in my teens, and has always been the trial of my life. I have been up and down the whole scale of restoratives, with all manner of recipes volunteered by sympathizing friends. Last fall, after returning from a two months’ stay near Saratoga, where I had undergone a severe course of treatment for sundry physical ills, my hair came out frightfully, till I was almost without any, and nothing seemed to check it. A relative, an old lady, told me to use burdock-root tea. I tried it, and it worked like a charm. My hair has never grown as it does now, and it has absolutely ceased coming out--something that has not been the case for fifteen years. Something of this may be due, as far as growth is concerned, to a receipt given me by a friend a month or so ago. It is a family receipt, and something of a family secret. The ladies of the house, who use it, have magnificent hair, which they attribute to this receipt. It is a queer conglomerate, as you see: One pound of yellow-dock root, boiled in five pints of water till reduced to one pint; strain, and add an ounce of pulverized borax, half an ounce of coarse salt, three ounces of sweet-oil, a pint of New England rum, and the juice of three large red onions, perfumed at pleasure--(a quarter of an ounce of oil of lavender and ten grains of ambergris would be efficacious in overcoming the powerful scent of the ingredients).