# The Ugly-Girl Papers/Chapter 14
### CHAPTER XIV.

* The Last of the Rose.
* Weighing in the Balances.
* To Love and to be Loved.
* The Enigma of Love.
* Its Power over the Lot of Men.
* Inspiration in the Looks.
* The Land of Spring.
* The Duchess of Devonshire.
* Women at and after Thirty.
* Training of Emotion.
* Warming the Voice.
* Crow's-feet at the Opera.
* Bohemian Arsenic Waters.
* Recipe from Madame Vestris.
* Milk of Roses.
* Sweet-oils.
* Opera-dancers' Prescription for Restoring Suppleness.
For any woman, maid or matron, past youth, who hears the leaves begin to drop, and sees the roses curl in the warm summer of her life, this chapter is written. It is well that with the decay of bloom and outward charm there should be a lessening of feeling, an amiable indifference to the homage that youth covets eagerly. The woman of — who dares fill in the age? — the woman who finds the faint lines on her cheek and the pallor creeping to ​Page:Ugly-girl papers.djvu/159 ​Page:Ugly-girl papers.djvu/160 ​Page:Ugly-girl papers.djvu/161 ​the fire and kindness that lit even its death-pillow; and the Josephine of Malmaison, with eyes always eloquent of tears, wins more devotion than the empress at Saint Cloud, confessed the loveliest woman of France. Let no woman fall into the mistake of preserving her beauty by refraining from emotion, for all she can keep by such costly pains will be the coffinlike shapeliness of flowers preserved in sand.
Laugh, weep, rejoice, or suffer as life provides. Only feel something natural, worthy, and vivid enough not to leave your face a blank.
There is a time between twenty-five and thirty-five when the struggle of life, mean or lofty as it may be, oppresses women sorely. Fret and care write crossing script on their faces, which grow yellow and pinched till they despair of comeliness. This is when they are learning to live. Ten years or so make the lesson easy, and it is one of the thankfulest things in the world to see such faces going back to the blossom and sunny sweetness of ​their spring. Many a woman is handsomer at thirty-nine than she was at thirty. Nature responds wonderfully to the reliefs afforded her. The only counsel is to let Nature go free. Do not think, because trial has bent spirit and frame together, that they should stay so a moment after the heavy hand is off. If you feel like singing, sing, not humming low, but joyful and clear as the larks, that would carol just as gayly at ninety, if larks lived so long, as the first summer they left their nests. The worst of English and American systems of manners is the constant repression they demand. It impairs even the physical powers, so that in training a singer the first thing great artists do is to teach her to feel, in order, as they say, to "warm up" the voice and give it fullness. Women need to cultivate pleasure and amusement far more after they are thirty than before it. I mean romantic pleasures, such as come from exquisite colors and sceneries in nature or their homes, from poetry and the loveliest music. They ​are twice as impressible then as they are in youth, if they know how to get hold of the right notes. They leave themselves to fall out of tune, and forget to respond.
Yet, as a woman does not love to carry her thinned tresses and crow's-feet into the glare of the opera, or to talk poetry when rhenmatism twinges her middle finger, the craft of the toilet comes in most gratefully. The freshness of the skin is prolonged by a simple secret, the tepid bath in which bran is stirred, followed by long friction, till the flesh fairly shines. This keeps the blood at the surface, and has its effect in warding off wrinkles. Bohemian countesses over thirty may go to arsenic springs, as they were wont to do, for the benefit of their complexions; but the home bath-room is more efficacious than even the minute doses of quicksilver with which the ladies of George the First's court used to poison themselves—a primitive way of getting at the virtues of blue-pill.
The celebrated Madame Vestris slept with ​her face covered by a paste which gave firmness to a loose skin and prevented wrinkles. It was a recipe which the Spanish ladies are fond of using, which requires the whites of four eggs boiled in rose-water, to which is added half an ounce of alum, and as much oil of sweet almonds, the whole beaten to a paste.
A favorite cosmetic of the time of Charles II. was the milk of roses, said to give a fair and youthful appearance to faded cheeks. It was made by boiling gum-benzoin in the spirits of wine till it formed a rich tincture, fifteen drops of which in a glass of water made a fragrant milk, in which the face and arms were bathed, leaving the lotion to dry on. It obliterates wrinkles as far as any thing can besides enamel.
To restore suppleness to the joints, the Oriental practice may be revived of anointing the body with oil. The best sweet-oil or oil of almonds is used for this purpose, slightly perfumed with attar of roses or oil of violets. ​The joints of the knees, shoulders, and fingers are to be oiled daily, and the ointment well rubbed into the skin, till it leaves no gloss. The muscles of the back feel a sensible relief from this treatment, especially when strained with work or with carrying children. The anointing should follow the bath, when the two are taken together. It is a pity this custom has ever fallen into disuse among our people, who need it quite as much as the sensuous Orientals.
Opera-dancers in Europe use an ointment which is thus given by Lola Montez: The fat of deer or stag, eight ounces; olive-oil, six ounces; virgin wax, three ounces; white brandy, half a pint; musk, one grain; rosewater, four ounces. The fat, oil, and wax are melted together, and the rose-water stirred into the brandy, after which all are beaten together. It is used to give suppleness to the limbs in dancing, and relieves the stiffness ensuing on violent exercise. Ambergris would suit modern taste better than musk in preparing this.