Women need the bath for all these purposes even more than men. The feeble mother will find no soothing for her jarred nerves or lightener of her burdens like the well-applied bath. Strange as it sounds, the vapor-bath does not weaken. It washes away the worse particles of the body that weigh it down, and leaves it as if winged. I have known an invalid of years take it twice and thrice a week, gaining strength every time. If harm came, it is because the head was not kept cool by fanning, or because the final sponging was not gradual enough. There is harm in every remedy used unskillfully. It is the doctor’s province to direct in such matters, always premising that the best and wisest physicians prefer to teach their clients the rules of health and treatment for themselves, and seldom refuse to give the reason and theory of their orders. It is safe to be shy of the perceptions and methods of a doctor who doesn’t like to tell what medicines he gives, and why he gives them. The keenest and best medical men are impatient to have others see and understand the truth as well as themselves. CHAPTER XXI. Devices of Uneasy Age.--Bread Paste and Court-plaster to Conceal Wrinkles.--Accepting the Situation.--Plain Women and Agreeable Toilets.--Examples.--The Rector’s Daughter.--Dressing on Two Hundred a Year.--Écru Linen and White Nansook.--A Senator’s Wife.--A Washington Success.--Dull, Thin Faces.--Hay-colored Hair.--Advantages of Lining Rooms with Mirrors. Did you ever go to see a lady, not of uncertain but of uneasy age, and find yourself ushered into the family sitting-room by a new servant, who did not know the ways of the house? Did you find her with a court-plaster lozenge an inch wide between her eyes, and one at the outer ends of her eyebrows? At sight of this remarkable ornament, did concern express itself lest she had fallen down stairs, or had a difference with the cat? Were these insinuations parried with veteran resources, and were you dissuaded from further inquiry by the delicate remark that she could interest you better than by giving the history of her scratches? Of course you knew there was a mystery about those bits of court-plaster, and perhaps feel so to this day, unless Nature have given you the mind of a detective. If so, your patience is to be rewarded. The secret of those patches was not scratches, but wrinkles.