# The Ugly-Girl Papers/Chapter 11
### CHAPTER XI.

* A Dark Potion.
* Olive-oil and Tar for the Face.
* Olive-tar for Inhalation.
* Carbolic Lotion for Pimples.
* Cure for Musquito Bites.
* Pale Blondes.
* A French Marquise.
* Deepening Colors by Sunlight.
* Seductive Cosmetics.
* Nose-machine.
* Finger Thimbles.
Neither distilled waters perfumed like May, nor embrocation smoother than velvet, are this time to be offered you. The compound in its ugliness is more like a witch's potion, and the odor is generally liked by those only who are used to it. But its merits are equal to its ugliness—nay, so firmly am I persuaded of its effectiveness that before sundown I doubt not its virtues will be in active test within this household. Sea winds will roughen the face, and miscellaneous food deteriorate the softest skins. There are wrinkles, too, showing their first faint daring on the brow before ​the glass — wrinkles which had no business there for ten years to come, at any rate. "What hand shall soothe" their trace away?
It is a hunter's prescription that comes You will hear of it along the Saranac, or up in the Franconia region, where the pines and spruces yield fresh resins for its making. It is popular there for its efficacy in keeping the black-flies and musquitoes away; yet even hunters bear witness to its excellence in leaving the skin fair and innocent. Thus runs the formula, simple enough, in all conscience, yet how few will have the boldness to try it: Mix one spoonful of the best tar in a pint of pure olive or almond oil, by heating the two together in a tin cup set in boiling water. Stir till completely mixed and smooth, putting in more oil if the compound is too thick to run easily. Rub this on the face when going to bed, and lay patches of soft old cloth on the cheeks and forehead to keep the tar from rubbing off. The bed linen must be protected ​by old sheets folded and thrown over the pillows. The odor, when mixed with oil, is not strong enough to be unpleasant — some people fancy its suggestion of aromatic pine breath — and the black, unpleasant mask washes off casily with warm water and soap. The skin comes out, after several applications, soft, moist, and tinted like a baby's. Certainly this wood ointment is preferable to the household remedy for coarse skins of wetting in buttermilk. Further, it effaces incipient wrinkles by softening and refining the skin. The French have long used turpentine to efface the marks of age, but the olive-tar is pleasanter. A pint of best olive-oil costs about forty cents at the grocer's; for the tar apply to the druggist, who keeps it on hand for inhaling. A spoonful of the mixture put in the water vase of a stove gives a faint pine odor to the air of a room, which is very soothing to weak lungs. Physicians often recommend it.
What is to be done with the malignant little red pimples that crop out annoyingly at ​the close of warm weather? The cause is very plain. When cool days check the perspiration, the system must send out matter by some other outlet before it can adjust itself to the new state of things. Nothing is better for the irritable face than bathing with a dilution of carbolic acid — one teaspoonful of the common acid to a pint of rose-water. The acid, as usually sold in solution, is about one half the strength of really pure acid, which is very hard to find. The recipe given above was furnished by a regular physician, and was used on a baby, to soothe eruptions caused by heat, with the happiest results. Care must be taken not to let the wash get into the eyes, as it certainly will smart, though it may not be strong enough to do further harm. No more purifying, healing lotion is known to medical skill, and its work is speedy. Poor baby was not beautiful with his face of unaccustomed spots and blotches, when the laving with the fluid began at night, but next morning they were hardly visible. I commend this again to ​mothers as a specific against those irritations with which children suffer. For soothing mus- quito bites alone it is worth all the camphor, soda washes, and hartshorn that ever were tried.
There is a word of comfort to-day for those most hopeless cases of unloveliness, tow-color- ed blondes. Light hair of the faintest shade, without a tinge of gold or auburn, is now fan- cied abroad. Chignons of pale hair, dressed in abundant frizzes, command nearly as high a price as those pure blondes dorées which have been worth so many times their weight in gold. Ladies of fashion in France dye their hair, or rather bleach it, to this colorless state; and the effect is very piquant with dark eyes and complexion. At the fêtes in Paris recent- ly a marchioness of daring taste attracted gen- eral admiration by her pale tresses, relieved by profuse black velvet trimmings. Indeed, the only wear for trés blondes is black, even if it is only black alpaca, with transparent ruches at the neck and wrists. Let such not fear to ex​Page:Ugly-girl papers.djvu/134 ​Page:Ugly-girl papers.djvu/135 ​Page:Ugly-girl papers.djvu/136