do not recommend), let it be the best of black tea, and not strong. Coffee, if drunk at all, should be diluted with twice its quantity of boiled milk, and well sweetened with white sugar.
IV.—BREATHING
Breathing is as necessary as eating. If we cease to breathe, our bodies cease to live. If we only half breathe, as is often the case, we only half live. The human system requires a constant supply of oxygen to keep up the vital processes which closely resemble combustion, of which oxygen is the prime supporter. If the supply is insufficient, the fire of life wanes. The healthy condition of the lungs also requires that they be completely expanded by the air inhaled. The imperfect breathing of many persons fails to accomplish the required inflation, and the lungs become diseased for want of their natural action. Full, deep breathing and pure air are as essential to health, happiness, and the right performance of our duties, whether individual, political, or social, as pure food and temperate habits of eating and drinking are. Attend, then, to the lungs as well as the stomach. Breathe good air. Have all your rooms, and especially your sleeping apartment well ventilated. The air which has been vitiated by breathing or by the action of fire, which abstracts the oxygen and supplies its place with carbonic acid gas, is a subtle poison.
V.—EXERCISE
The amount of physical exercise required varies with age, sex, and temperament; but no person can enjoy vigorous health without a considerable degree of active bodily exertion. Four or five hours per day spent in the open air, in some labor or amusement which calls for the exercise of the muscles of the body, is probably no more than a proper average. We can live with less—that is, for a short time; but Nature's laws are inexorable, and we can not escape the penalty affixed to their violation. Those whose occupations are sedentary should seek amusements which require the exertion of the physical powers, and should spend as much as possible of their leisure time in the open air. We must, however, use good judgment in this matter as well as in eating. Too much exercise at once, or that which is fitful and violent, is often exceedingly injurious to those whose occupations have accustomed them to little physical exertion of any kind.
The women of our country are suffering incalculably for want of proper exercise. No other single cause perhaps is doing so much to destroy health and beauty, and deteriorate the race, as this. "Your women are very handsome," Frederika Bremer said, one day, "but they are too white; they look as if they grew in the shade." A sad truth. Ladies, if you would be healthy, beautiful, and attractive—if you would fit yourselves to be good wives, and the mothers of strong and noble men, you must take an adequate amount of exercise in the open air. This should be an every-day duty.
VI.—THE COMPLEXION
Every person, and especially every lady, desires a clear complexion. To secure this, follow the foregoing directions in reference to cleanliness, eating, drinking, breathing, and exercise. The same recipe serves for ruby lips and rosy cheeks. These come and go with health, and health depends upon obedience to the laws of our constitution.
VII.—GENERAL HINTS
Few of us are free from disagreeable habits of which we are hardly conscious, so seemingly natural have they become to us. It is the office of friendship, though not always a pleasant one, to point them out. It is our business to assume that office here, finding our excuse in the necessity of the case. Our bad habits not only injure ourselves, but they give offense to others, and indirectly injure them also.
Ladies, in this country, do not use tobacco, so they may skip this section. A large and increasing number of gentlemen may do the same; but if you use tobacco, in any forth, allow us to whisper a useful hint or two in your ear.
Smoking, snuff-taking, and especially chewing, are bad habits at best, and in their coarser forms highly disgusting to pure and refined people, and especially to ladies. You have the same right to smoke, take snuff, and chew that you have to indulge in the luxuries of a filthy skin and soiled garments, but you have no right, in either case, to do violence to the senses and sensibilities of other people by their exhibition in society. Smoke if you will, chew, take snuff (against our earnest advice, however), make yourself generally and particularly disagreeable, but you must suffer the consequences—the social outlawry which must result. Shall we convert our parlors into tobacco shops, risk the ruin of our carpets and furniture from the random shots of your disgusting saliva, and fill the whole atmosphere of our house with a pungent stench, to the discomfort and disgust of everybody else, merely for the pleasure of your company? We have rights as well as you, one of which is to exclude from our circle all persons whose manners or habits are distasteful to us. You talk of rights. You can not blame others for exercising theirs.
There are degrees here as everywhere else. One may chew a little, smoke an occasional cigar, and take a pinch of snuff now and then, and if he never indulges in these habits in the presence of others, and is very careful to purify his person before going into company, he may confine the bad effects, which he can not escape, mostly to his own person. But he must not smoke in any parlor, or sitting-room, or dining-room, or sleeping chamber, or in the street, and particularly not in the presence of ladies, anywhere.
"The use of tobacco has made us a nation of spitters," as some one has truly remarked. Spitting is a private act, and tobacco users are not alone in violating good taste and good manners by hawking and spitting in company. You should never be seen to spit. Use your handkerchief carefully and so as not to be noticed, or, in case of necessity, leave the room.
The spirit and tenor of our remarks on tobacco will apply to the use of ardent spirits. The fumes of gin, whisky, and rum are, if possible, worse than the scent of tobacco. They must on no account be brought into company. If a man (this is another section which women may skip) will make a beast of himself, and fill his blood with liquid poison, he must, if he desires admission into good company, do it either privately or with companions whose senses and appetites are as depraved as his own.
All foods or drinks which taint the breath or cause disagreeable eructations should be avoided by persons going into company. Onions emit so very disagreeable an odor that no truly polite person will eat them when liable to inflict their fumes upon others. Particular care should be taken to guard against a bad breath from any cause.
Never pare or scrape your nails, pick your teeth, comb your hair, or perform any of the necessary operations of the toilet in company. All these things should be carefully attended to in the privacy of your own room. To pick the nose, dig the ears, or scratch the head or any part of the person in company is still worse. Watch yourself carefully, and if you have any such habits, break them up at once. These may seem little things, but they have their weight, and go far in determining the character of the impression we make upon those around us.
II.
DRESS
From little matters let us pass to less,
And lightly touch the mysteries of dress;
The outward forms the inner man reveal;
We guess the pulp before we eat the peel.—O. W. Holmes.
I.—THE LANGUAGE OF DRESS
Dress has its language, which is, or may be, read and understood by all. It is one of the forms in which we naturally give expression to our tastes, our constructive faculties, our reason, our feelings, our habits—in a word, to our character, as a whole. This expression is often greatly modified by the arbitrary laws of Fashion, and by circumstances of time, place, and condition, which we can not wholly control; but can hardly be entirely falsified. Even
