Popular Science Monthly 

 Your Razor Is Like a Scythe 



IF we had eyes like microscopes, the 

 process of shaving would seem not 

 much different from mowing with a 

 bush-scythe. A razor is practically a 

 miniature bush-scythe, and its cutting 

 action is similar. Some of the bushes 

 are cut squarely across and others at an 



acute angle. When the 



bushes are upright, and the 

 scythe is swung directly 

 against them, the cut is 

 made nearly at a right an- 

 gle. But if the bush man 

 cuts his bushes a little too 

 high and then wants to go 

 over them again, "grub- 

 bing" them down to the 

 ground, as he would 



349 



the lather is off, the barber will occa- 

 sionally wet his lingers, because the face 

 gets too dry. Indeed, there is nothing 

 to maintain the perpendicularity of the 

 beard. It bends over and the barber 

 rapidly whacks away at it like the bush- 

 man grubbing the bushes to the ground. 

 In connection with these views of the 



Cuttings 

 the second 

 time over 



4^1 'x.^' 



phrase it, especially if the bushy stumps 

 are in a marshy place where the ground 

 does not hold them firmly, he strikes at 

 them several times in succession, and the 

 cut is likely to be more and more at a 

 slant, depending upon the resistance with 

 which they hold their own in the ground. 

 \\'hen the barber ap])lies a heavy coat 

 of lather to a long beard, the lather tends 

 to. hold the hair upright. In the first 

 shaving, the microscope shows that the 

 cuttings are nearly at a right angle to 

 the length of the beard, but the "second 

 time over," when the call is for "a close 

 shave, Mr. Barber," short rapid strokes 

 are made, several times repeated. When 



Microscopic views of the cut- 

 ings after shaving. The long 

 hairs in the picture above are 

 from a three days' growth 

 of an Albino Irishman. Note 

 that the hairs were cut near- 

 ly at right angles 



uiman l)eard, there is some- 

 thing very surprising in Dean 

 Swift's "A Voyage to Brob- 

 dingnag," where he describes 

 a mythical traveler to the land 



of the giants and what he had to say of 



giants' beards. He writes : 



"I used to attend the king's levee once or 

 twice a week, and had often seen him under 

 the barber's hand, wliich, indeed, was at first 

 very terrible to behold : for the razor was 

 almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe. 



1 once prevailed on the barber to give me 



some of the suds or lather, out of which I 

 picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps 

 of hair. I then took a piece of fine wood, 

 and cut it like the back of a comb, making 

 several holes in it at crpial distances with a 

 needle....! fixed in tlio stumps S(~> artificially, 

 scraping and sloping them with my knife to- 

 wards the points, tliat I made a very tolerable 

 comb which was a seasonable supply, my own 

 being so much broken in the teeth, that it was 

 almost useless." 



