om none of our remarks may apply, will certainly have the
courtesy to excuse them for the sake of those to whom they will be
useful.

II.--CLEANLINESS.

"Cleanliness is akin to godliness," it is said. It is not less closely
related to gentility. First of all, then, keep yourself scrupulously
clean--not your hands and face merely, but your whole person, from the
crown of your head to the sole of your foot. Silk stockings may hide
dirty feet and ankles from the eye, but they often reveal themselves
to another sense, when the possessor little dreams of such an
exposure. It is far better to dress coarsely and out of fashion and be
strictly clean, than to cover a dirty skin with the finest and richest
clothing. A coarse shirt or a calico dress is not necessarily vulgar,
but dirt is essentially so. We do not here refer, of course, to one's
condition while engaged in his or her industrial occupation. Soiled
hands and even a begrimed face are badges of honor in the field, the
workshop, or the kitchen, but in a country in which soap and water
abound, there is no excuse for carrying them into the parlor or the
dining-room.

A clean skin is as essential to health, beauty, and personal comfort
as it is to decency; and without health and that perfect freedom from
physical disquiet which comes only from the normal action of all the
functions of the bodily organs, your behavior can never be
satisfactory to yourself or agreeable to others. Let us urge you,
then, to give this matter your first attention.

1. _The Daily Bath._

To keep clean you must bathe frequently. In the first place you should
wash the whole body with pure soft water every morning on rising from
your bed, rubbing it till dry with a coarse towel, and afterward using
friction with the hands. If you have not been at all accustomed to
cold bathing, commence with tepid water, lowering the temperature by
degrees till that which is perfectly cold becomes agreeable. In warm
weather, comfort and cleanliness alike require still more frequent
bathing. Mohammed made frequent ablutions a religious duty; and in
that he was right. The rank and fetid odors which exhale from a foul
skin can hardly be neutralized by the sweetest incense of devotion.

2. _Soap and Water._

But the daily bath of which we have spoken is not sufficient. In
addition to the pores from which exudes the watery fluid called
perspiration, the skin is furnished with innumerable minute openings,
k