bought sham beards for his Egyptian grenadiers, that they might more
closely resemble the European model. The soldiers of Harold thought that
the Normans were all priests, because they were "shavelings;" and it is
only natural that soldiers should in all countries be bearded. It is
almost impossible to shave during a campaign. Stendhal, the French
novelist and critic, was remarkable as the best, perhaps the only, clean-
shaved man in the French army during the dreadful retreat from Moscow. In
his time, as in that of our fathers, ideas of beauty had changed, and the
smooth chin was as much the mark of a gentleman as the bearded chin had
been the token of a man.

The idea that shaving is a duty--ceremonial, as among the Egyptian
priests, or social merely, as among ourselves--is older than the
invention of steel or even of bronze razors. Nothing is more remarkable
in savage life than the resolution of the braves who shave with a shell
or with a broken piece of glass, left by European mariners. A warrior
will throw himself upon the ground, and while one friend sits on his
head, and another holds his arms and prevents him from struggling, a
third will scrape his chin with the shell or the broken bottle-glass till
he rises, bleeding, but beardless. Macaulay, it seems, must have shaved
almost as badly with the razor of modern life. When he went to a barber,
and, after an easy shave, asked what he owed, the fellow replied, "Just
what you generally give the man who shaves you, sir." "I generally give
him two cuts on each cheek," said the historian of England. Shaving
requires a combination of qualities which rarely meet in one amateur. You
should have plenty of razors, unlike a Prussian ambassador of the stingy
Frederick. This ambassador, according to Voltaire, cut his throat with
the only razor he possessed. The chin of that diplomatist must have been
unworthy alike of the Court to which he was accredited, and of that from
which he came. The exquisite shaver who would face the world with a
smooth chin requires many razors, many strops, many brushes, odd soaps, a
light steady hand, and, perhaps, a certain gaiety of temper which
prevents edged weapons from offering unholy temptations. Possibly the
shaver is born, not made, like the poet; it is sure that many men are
born with an inability to shave. Hence comes the need for the kindly
race of barbers, a race dear to literature. Their shops were the
earliest clubs