Cosmetics sometimes play tricks with fair skins which are quite mysterious to the unlucky subject. This is the case with the tar and olive ointment named a few chapters ago. Those who find that its application brings out a fearful crop of pimples, and turns the skin yellow, should feel that the ointment has been a friend to them, in detecting a state of the blood that is any thing but safe. People of sedentary habits, who pay little attention to their health, are not aware how vitiated their blood may be for want of sunshine, good food, and exercise. Its torpid current leaves no mark of disease on the surface; humors concentrate in the vital organs, and finally appear in the form of chronic disorders. Consumption leaves the skin clear and brilliant, because the morbid matters which usually pass off through the skin are eating away the life in ulcers beneath. The tar brings them to the surface, and one application sometimes leaves a face in a sorry state. Three ladies of different families tried the recipe at the same time, with frightful results, for the reason that they were all in the state when a dose of blood purifier would have had the same effect. One lady kept on using the lotion, and her face became smooth after trying it three or four times. When people perspire freely, such unhappy effects are seldom noticed. Apropos of this, come a few lines from W. H. H. Murray, the author of the _Hand-book of the Adirondacks_. A lady who was puzzled by the effect of the cosmetic wrote to him about it, knowing he was familiar with its use in the mountains, and received this merry answer: “I have had a hearty laugh over your perplexity. All I know is, the mixture was common sailors’ tar and sweet-oil, with the consistency of sirup. Our party, ladies and gentlemen both, have used it freely for years in the woods, and the ladies have always declared that it made their skin as soft as satin. Certain it is, it never caused any _rash_ in their case.” Delicate, fair-skinned women are the very ones on whom this cosmetic will have the effect of drawing humors to the surface. Heavens! how many of this sort there are in the world--pale, shadowy as porcelain, fragile of bone and tender of skin, about as useful as wish-bones of a Christmas chicken! They have intense souls; it is a pity they have not enough body to hold them. Is there not wit enough in the world to conjure flesh to the bones and strength to the muscles of this great army of weak women? CHAPTER XX.