86 COSMETICS. 



tinuously. Day by day and, still more, night by night, the 

 hair grows. The root of yesterday is the stem of to-day ? 

 and what was underground to use a metaphor could not 

 have come under the dyeing influence. No failure of the 

 hair-dyeing art looks more ridiculous than that resulting in 

 a particoloured effect the body and tips of one colour, the 

 lower part of the stem another. People before committing 

 themselves to the practice of hair-dyeing should well con- 

 sider this. Let them remember that it must be a practice, 

 not a casualty, or else the deception will stand revealed; 

 let them bear in mind also the precept, that in this affair 

 leaving off is worse than beginning. 



It needs a good deal of moral courage to begin to grow 

 a beard. Nothing can well look more disreputable than a 

 beard two days old, except perhaps it be a beard of three 

 days. It takes a week before the scope and design of what 

 the fellow is about becomes apparent, and even then he feels 

 uncomfortable to himself and all about him. The bent and 

 genius of a man's character may be divined by observing the 

 manner in which he begins to grow a beard, having resolved 

 to do so. One man will cultivate the stubble excrescence all 

 over each appointed square inch, suffering resolutely taunts 

 and gibes : the mens sibi conscia recti. I like that man : he 

 is an honest man. With my purse I would trust that man 

 my wife, my daughter. To such a man I incline at once : 

 he is my beau ideal. He would tell me my faults at once,, 

 and not conceal them, making me morally worse, thinking 

 to please me. Another man, having concluded to grow a 

 beard, will go surreptitiously to work, encroaching a little 

 day by day, thinking you will never discover it. Accursed 

 be that base individual carbone notandus I Even so would 

 he encroach on my landmarks, my purse, my family peace. 

 He would rob a canary-bird of his sugar the trope is not 

 mine he would grub-up his grandmamma to make knife- 

 handles out of her leg-bones. 



