Before the Mirror

You know that your face is the mirror through which the world looks at you; and do you trust that your face plays the greatest part in drawing eyes and winning admiration for you?

You can be beautiful and bewitching if you examine your skin and learn what it needs in order to appear healthy and vigorous.

In winter it bears the harshness and roughness of the weather, and in summer the severity of the heat and its blaze; hence you find your face now dry and now oily. Dry weather is your best helper in learning the type of your skin, because perspiration brings out its good qualities and its bad. Enlarged pores exist in both types of skin, the dry and the oily, though they most often afflict oily skin, owing to the want of stretch in the pores. When oily matter is present, the skin loses its power to regulate it and to adjust the quantity it gives off. You must therefore take care over your food, for it has a great effect upon your face; and you must likewise make certain of the cleanliness of your skin and of what it secretes, and adjust the amount of calories you require.

To remove the oily matter from your face, try this simple method:

1 – Anoint your skin with a generous amount of cream in a rippling motion: first for cleansing and second for massage, helping yourself thereby to remove the "weeping" wrinkles that come of the daily contractions of your face. After the light massage, rest a little, then clean the cream well off your face.

2 – Mix a little powder in a small dish or in the palm of your hand, so as to make of it a soft paste; then spread it over your face and neck, and when it is nearly dry, "brush" your face with a gentle circular motion of your fingertips, giving enough time to the oily spots around the nose and the chin. Then watch how the withered skin, which had served as a barrier covering the dirty pores, falls away — for the circulation of the blood has been quickened, and your face has become healthy and ready to show your vitality.

3 – Accustom yourself always to washing it with cold water. Oily skin needs this operation repeated constantly, because it is exposed to absorbing dirt; and if your skin is dry, twice a week will show you wonders.