Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1870-06-15
From the Herald Of Health for June.l
GLORY AND SHAME OF THE HAIR.
BY REV. CHARLES II. BRIGHAM.

ne VIII nave IL JnaJ WnaJ Is glory Z
the woman is shame to the man; tina
hair is the natural covering of tn
weaker sex, and so ought to be worl
long, while it is a scandal for a maj
to appear in the solemn assemble
with flowing locks. He is followe,
in this judicial advice by the eompa
nies in cur fashionable churches
where the damsels not only conn
weighted with all their own hair. but
with heavy mass which is not theil
own, while the youths by their side:
come in fighting trim, with polls clost
cropped and shaven. There are few
fashions which can not find warrant
in the Holy Writ, and the fashion o.
wearing hair just now may use the
| Apostolic permission as freely as tip
| piers used Paul's counsel TO Timothy
or slave-drivers Paul's injunction tc
Philemon.
The hair is by no means the most
important of bodily organs and ap-
pendages. 1t can be lost more safely
than most of the other organs. We
can do without it better than we can
do without eyes, or without teeth
If any part of the body is to be torn
away, this may be spared sooner than
the rest. Yet no bodily appendage is
the subject of so many experiments,
no part of the frame illustrates so
well invention and fancy. The man.
agement of the hair is with One-half
of the human race prime interest of
life, to which most others must yield.
1t is an interest of the savage and the
civilized state, as important in the
court of France as in the court of
Ethiopia. The "Queens of society"
are as much dependent upon their
hair as those queens of the wigwam,
who wear the most primitive of wo-
ven raiment. No work of human
hands accOmplishes more wonderful
marvels of form than the slender
threads as they are rolled and twisted.
In nothing are the capriees of fashion
more arbitrary and its changes more
rapid. This year it is frizzle upon the
forehead, next year it may be cushion
upon the hindhead, in the next year
pendent curls, and in the next year,
perhaps, braided pig-tails. Now it
will show down and around the ears
and cheeks a 'shining shoren of hair
polished into a dazzling mirror. And
then it will lie around the skull in
coils like those of the Indian cobra.
Sometimes it is twined with golden
piastres, and sometimes fastened in
the meshes of a net. Sometimes it
flows unchecked like a river in fresh
ct, and then again it is damned above
the head in a solid and precipitous
wall. Now it is cOntrived to hold
rodents in his burrows, and now to
hang threatening in arrested cataracts.
1t can initiate the horns of Moses in
the modern sculpture, or the horns OF
Pan in the ancient sculpture. It is
combed and cleansed only to be pow
dered and busted with metallic dust.
Some who are dainty in their hatred
of dusky skin torment their straight
locks with imitation of the negro's
wool. What infinite ingenuity, what
endless thought, what wealth of ap
pliances, what hours of the precious
day, are everywhere spent in this
work of keeping the hair up to the
fashion, of training, binding, and
torturing it into the mode of the seas
on! And when the wicked gray be-
gins to fleck its lines, and prOphesies
of a blossoming almond tree by and
bv. what care to hide this sign of
years. Along with the phials of per-
fume are ranged the phials that hold
to the hair its fading hues, or restore
the eOlors which time is changing
And many a matron, who is careless
of Paulis other words to the elder
women, illustrates in the evening as
semblies, as her hair is wonder and
delight, that line of Paul's epistle, 81
protest, by your rejoicing, die ddity!"
With the other sex the fashion of
wearing hair is less tyrannous and
capricious. There are those whose
hair shows no change from boyhood
to age, except as it is cut from time to
time, and bleaches into frost. 1t has
always the same curve upon the fore
head, always the same line of parting.
Yet there are freaks of fashion which
many men obey. Sometimes the hair
must be worn long, as the Cavaliers
wore il: sometimes it must be crop
ped in the style of the ROundhead.-
Now it is short before and long be-
hind; and then it is long before and
short behind. But if the hair of men
is less liable to change in its order
than that of women, fashion has its
in ordering the beard, that
fatal gift of manhood which makes
the barber a master of men. How
much of the zeal of fashionable life Is
on this cut and curl of
the beard. The Emperor of France
is as proud of his moustache as of his
imperial title, and twists it carefully
for cabinet councils. A native Greek
wears his badge Of loyalty upon his
upper lip, and swears by this as the
swears 'by the beard of my
Father" \ mutton-chop is found in
perfection in an English inn, and the
average aristocratic Englishman is
known by his mutton-chop whis-
kers." There are those who would
show themselves kindred to the goat
in their appendage to the chin, not
mindful of Jewish tradition, or of the
Christian Judgment and SENTENCE
Now the care of the beard consists in
cutting it all away, in leaving on
cheeks and chin and lips and throat
no vestige of hair; and then it en-
Telops mouth and neck and breast in
1 volume of hair, like the name of the
the pet baboon of King
court.
The way in which the hair is worn /
1ften decides the locality and nation
ility, still oftner the associations and
.astes of the man. The Southern I
before the war of the I
was known by his long
ocks; and these also have been the |
ign of the literary Bohemian as of I
he fanatical reformer. One of this /
lass always warns his hearers that /
lis speech will be odd and startling /
~ the tangle of the fiery curls which /
hang from his long skull. Artists
part hair i'm the middle, some say to
ook unlike other men, others because
hat is the "Christ style of old paint
rs" At one time, when Judge Shaw
vas on the Supreme Bench of Massa-
.husetts, and Rufus Choate was at
he head of its bar, the young lawyers
.ffeeted the unkempt and dishevelled
tyle, and cultivated wild and strag-
ling clumps of hair. Different col
eges, too, have their styles, the Yale
tyle is not that of Harvard, and
Vest Point has its own. Every one
,nows what is the prison cut, how
onvicts are shaven and shorn. Then
he Quakers have their style, and the
priests their style. The ton
ure, bald spot on the back of the
rown, ,distinguishesthe Catholic man
f God, as much as his robe or his hat.
he Gypsies wear their hair in one
ray, the Swiss peasantry in another,
he German Jews in still another |
lay, there are African tribes who {
dopt the model of the fretful poreu- ]
inc, and train their hair to stand on