The St. Louis Republic. [volume] (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, 1904-02-21
BY MARION MARTINEAU.

WRITTEN FOR THE SUNDAY REPUBLIC.
OUR fingers should be taper
ing" said the old manicure
leaning back and looking at
- her pretty customer. and
your nails should glisten like
the rose. You can make them taper by
pinching them. p
Il am Of the old school of manicuring,"
aid she. with a shrug. My school was in
full blast long before the lays of the
: chamois polisher and the curved scissors.
There was no such thing as a cuticle knife
and the manicure worked with the family
scissors and with such polishing powder
as she could make. That was in the long
ago..
elaborate that 1t takes n box n foot square
to hold them and they have powders and
pastes enough 20 destroy a hundred hands,
If a woman mad them. instead of two.
'"They say that 1 exaggerate and that 1
am sour. Well, perhaps! But you see l
nav worked q great deal with manicures
and I know how useless most of the i'm
plements are.
"A customer of mine, a Newport woman
who has a regular manicure. came to town
one day and dropped into n poor manicur-
ing establishment. When she entered her
nails were in fairly good shape. When
she came out they were clipped and
scraped and polished and cuticled and
spoiled. And it took her three weeks to
get them right again.
Zone manicure actually cuts away the
cuticle every time, trimming Off a great
ridge all around the nail. And another
had a trick OF scraping the nails before
she began to polish them. OF course, all
OF these things are bad for the nails.
The best manicures of to-day work in
SO simple a fashion that you wonder what
they are doing for you. and, sometimes,
IL your nails are in pretty good shape,
you come out wondering what she has
done to earn your so cents.
There are plenty of m~anicures that
work for % cents. and. perhaps, this is
enough. But a good manicure who attends
faithfully to the ten fingers that are
spread out before her really earns her
half a dollar"
And the old manicure turned to the ia
BILE where she was, making pink lotions
for the coloring of the nails.
SHAPING THE NAILS.
A manicure must shape the nails. She
must drive back the skin by some art of
her own. And this art is usually a patent
ed one, so to speak. being different in
nearly every case.
One manicure will push back the skin
with the orange-wood stick. But if the
nails be thin this will leave n white mark.
Another will. if the case he an obstinate
ono. use a metal pusher. This is almost
always detrimental TO the appearance of
the nails. Another will be content with his
own fingers, which are soft and which viii
draw back the skin nicely. The highest
priced manicures use a bit of old Turkish
toweling. which is soft. yet insistent.
Besides curving the nails to an almond
shape. and pushing back the skin, d good
manicure will make them pink. Then
she will polish them thoroughly md,
finally. she will bleach the hands.
A manicure who understands the skin
and how to treat it will remove freckles
reduce chap. take away all roughness, and
will whiten ii soften the entire hand.
A woman can go into a manicuring es-
tablishment with her hands as rough as
nutmeg graters and her nails almost
ragged. And in an hour she can come
out with her hands soft and smooth and
the nails In very feir condition.
4 manicure, If she understands her bust
ness, can cure many diseases OF the nails,
prominent among which is the biting of
the nails. This is a nervous trouble, but
one that can be controlled by treating the
nails.
The old manicures used torapply quinine
and other bitter substances. But the re-
cent schools of m~anjcuring advise the
treatment of the nails themselves. A nail
that is polished perfectly smooth so that It
feels like glass to the teeth, will discour-
age the one who Is inclfneds to bite Them.
Many persons are nervous n fospb' and ,