e effects with
mists and cobwebs, with lace-like moss on sturdy old oaks, the bloom on
the peach and the grape. Nature produces her most enchanting colorings
with dust and age. Laces, gauzes, mulls, chiffons, net, and gossamer
throw the same beautiful glamour over the face and they are fit and
charming accompaniments of gray hair, which is a wonderful softener of
defective complexions and hard facial lines.

Too much cannot be written upon the proper arrangement in the neck-gear
of the aged. The disfiguring wrinkles that make many necks unsightly may
be kept in obeyance by massaging. No matter what the fashion in
neck-gear, the aged must modify it to suit their needs. An old lady
with a thin, pipe-stem neck should adopt a full ruche and fluffy, soft
collar-bands. I cannot forbear repeating that tulle as light as thistle
bubbles, either white or gray or black, is exquisitely effective for
thin, scrawny necks. The fleshy, red neck should be softened with powder
and discreetly veiled in chemisettes of chiffon and delicate net.

Old ladies may keep in the style, thus being in the picture of the hour;
but it is one of the divine privileges of age that it can make its own
modes. Absolute cleanliness, cleanliness as exacting as that proper
nurses prescribe for babies, is the first and most important factor in
making old age attractive. Rich dress, in artistic colors, soft, misty,
esthetic, comes next; then the idealizing scarfs, collars, jabots, and
fichus of lace and tulles. Old people becomingly and artistically
attired have the charm of rare old pictures. If they have soul-illumined
faces they are precious masterpieces.

CHAPTER VII.

HOW MEN CARICATURE THEMSELVES WITH THEIR CLOTHES.

Although in the dress of man there are fewer possibilities of caricature
than in that of woman, yet, "the masterpieces of creation" frequently
exaggerate in a laughable--and sometimes a pitiable--way, certain
physical characteristics by an injudicious choice of clothes.

As the fashion in hair-dressing does not grant man the privilege of
enhancing his facial attractions; nor of obscuring his defects by a
becomingly arranged coiffure; and, as the modes in neck-gear are such
that he cannot modify the blemishes of a defective complexion by
encircling his athletic or scrawny throat with airy tulle, or dainty
lace, that arch-idealizer of pasty-looking faces; and as he has forsworn
soft, trailing garments that conceal unclassic curves