From Household Words.
WHY SHAVE?

"I see

tache. In the best days of Greece few but the philosophers wore unpruned beards. A large flowing beard and a large flowing mantle were THERE are misguided men -and I am one in those times as naturally and essentially a of them — who defile daily their own beards, part of the business of a philosopher, as a rasp them away as fast as they peep out from signboard is part in these days of the business beneath the skin, mix them ignominiously of a publican. So there is a small joke rewith soap-suds, and cause them to be cast corded of an emperor, who, having been long away with the offscourings of the house. We teased by an importunate talker, asked him are at great pains and trouble to do this, and who or what he was. The man replied in we do it unwillingly, knowing that we deprive pique, "Do you not see by my beard and our faces of an ornament, and more or less mantle that I am a philosopher?" suspecting that we take away from ourselves the beard and mantle," said the emperor, something given to us by nature for our use "but the philosopher, where is he?" and our advantage; as indeed we do. Never- The idea that there existed a connection theless, we treat our beards as so much dirt between a man's vigor of mind and body, and that has to be removed daily from our persons, the vigor of growth in his beard, was confor no other reason than because it is the cus-firmed by the fact that Socrates, the wisest of tom of the country; or, because we wish the Greek philosophers, earned preeminently (according to the French philosopher whom the title of the bearded. Among races of men we largely quote in another paper in this number), because we strive to make ourselves prettier by assimilating our appearance to that of women.

capable of growing rich crops on the chin, the beard has always been regarded more or less as a type of power. Some races, as the Mongolians, do not get more than twenty or I am no friend to gentlemen who wilfully thirty thick coarse hairs, and are as likely affect external oddity, while they are within then to pluck them out after the fashion of all dull and commonplace. I am not disposed some northern tribes, as to esteem them in by carrying a beard myself to beard public an exaggerated way, as has been sometimes opinion. But opinions may change; we were not always a nation of shavers. The day may again come when "'T will be merry in hall, when beards wag all," and Britons shall no more be slaves to razors.

the case in China. In the world's history the bearded races have at all times been the most important actors, and there is no part of the body which on the whole they have shown more readiness to honor. Among many nations, and through many centuries, development of beard has been thought indicative of the development of strength, both bodily and mental. In strict accordance with that feeling the strength of Samson was made to rest in his hair. The beard became naturally honored, inasmuch as it is a characteristic feature of the chief of the two sexes (I speak as an ancient), of man, and of man only, in the best years of his life, when he is capable of putting forth his independent energies. As years multiply and judgment ripens the beard grows, and with it grows, or ought to grow, every man's title to respect. Gray beards became thus so closely connected with the idea of mature discretion, that they were taken often as its sign or cause; and thus it was fabled of the wise king Numa that he was gray-haired even in his youth.

I have never read of savages who shaved themselves with flints; nor have I been able to discover who first introduced among civilized men the tonsure of the chin. The shaven polls and faces of ecclesiastics date from the time of Pope Anacletus, who introduced the custom upon the same literal authority of Scripture that still causes women to wear bonnets in our churches, that they may not pray uncovered. Saint Paul, in the same chapter, further asks the Corinthians, "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him?" Pope Anacletus determined, therefore, to remove all shame from churchmen, by ordering them to go shaven altogether. The shaving of the beard by laymen was, however, a practice much more ancient. The Greeks taught shaving to the Romans, and Pliny records that the first Greek barbers were taken To revert to the subject of shaving. Tacitus from Sicily to Rome by Publius Ticinius, in says that in his time the Germans cut their the four hundred and fifty-fourth year after beards. In our times among that people the the building of the city. The Greeks, how-growth of a beard, or at least of a good mystax certainly it was so with them in the or mustache, had come by the year eighteen time of Alexander -seem to have been more hundred and forty-eight to be regarded so much disposed to use their barbers for the pruning as a mark of aristocracy that after the revoluand trimming than for the absolute removal tions of that year the Germans took to the of the beard, and of that ornament upon the obliteration of the vain mark of distinction by upper lip which they termed the mystax, and growing hair on their own chins and upper which we call-using the same name that lips. Hairs have been thus made significant they gave to it, slightly corrupted-mus- in a new way. There are now such things to

ever

be seen on the Continent as revolutionary | to an extravagant extent. Shaving compels beards, and not long ago, in a small German the hair to grow at an undue rate. It has state, a barrister was denied a hearing because been calculated that a man mows off in the he stood up in his place in the law court course of a year about six inches-and-a-half wearing a beard of the revolutionary cut. of beard, so that a man of eighty would have Not only custom, but even to this day law, reg- chopped up in the course of his life a twentyulates the cultivation of the hair on many of seven foot beard; twenty feet more, perhaps, our faces. There is scarcely an army in than would have sprouted, had he left nature Europe which is not subject to some regula- alone, and contented himself with so much tions that affect the beard and whiskers. In occasional trimming as would be required by England the chin and, except in some regi- the just laws of cleanliness and decency. ments, the upper lip have to be shaved; elsewhere the beard is to be cultivated and the whiskers shaven. Such matters may have their significance. The most significant of whiskers are, however, those worn by the Jews in the East, and especially in Africa, who, in accordance with a traditional superstition, keep them at an uniform level of about half an inch in length, and cut them into cabalistic characters curiously scattered about over the face.

As there are some communities especially bestowing care and houor on the beard, and others more devoted to the whiskers, so there are nations, as the Hungarian, in which the honor of the mustache is particularly cherished. The mustaches of General Haynau were about half-a-yard long. A Hungarian dragoon who aspired to eminence in that way, and had nursed a pair of mustaches for two years until they were only second to Haynau's, fell asleep one day after dinner with a cigar in his mouth. He awoke with one of his fine nose-tails so terribly burnt at the roots, that he was obliged after wards to resort to an art used by many of his companions, and to fortify the weak mustache by twining into its substance artificial hair. Such freaks and absurdities are, of course, inconsistent with the mature dignity of bearded men. Let us have whisker, beard, and mustache, reverently worn, and trimmed discreetly and with decency. I am not for the cabalistic whisker, the Hungarian mustache, or a beard like that worn by the Venetian magnate, of whom Sismondi relates that if he did not lift it up, he would trip over it in walking. Still worse was the beard of the carpenter depicted in the Prince's Court at Eidam; who, because it was nine feet long, was obliged, when at work, to sling it about him in a bug. A beard like either of those is, however, very much of a phe nomenon in nature. The hair of a man's head is finer, generally, than that on the head of women, and if left uncut, would not grow to nearly the same length. A woman's back-hair is an appurtenance entirely and naturally feminine. In the same way, the development of the hair upon the face of men, if left unchecked-although it would differ much in different climates, and in different individuals would very rarely go on

It has been erroneously asserted that a growth of beard would cover up the face, hide the expression of the features, and give a deceitful mark of uniform sedateness to the entire population. As for that last assertion, it is the direct reverse of what is true. Sir Charles Bell, in his essay on expression, properly observes that no one who has been present at an assembly of bearded men can have failed to remark the greater variety and force of the expression they are able to convey. What can be more portentous, for example, than to see the brow cloud and the eyes Hash and the nostrils dilate over a beard curling visibly with anger? How ill does a smooth chin support at any time the character assumed by the remainder of the face, except it be a character of sanctimonious oiliness that does not belong honestly to man, or such a pretty chin as makes the charm that should belong only to a woman or a child!

Therefore I ask, why do we shave our beards? Why are we a bare-chinned people? That the hair upon the face of man was given to him for sufficient reasons it will take but little time to show. It has various uses, physiological and mechanical. To take a physiological use first, we may point out the fact that the formation of hair is one method of extruding carbon from the system, and that the external hairs aid after their own way in the work that has to be done by the internal lungs. Their use in this respect is not lessened by shaving; on the contrary, the elimination of carbon through the hairs of the face is made to go on with unnatural activity, because the natural effort to cover the chin with hair is increased in the vain struggle to remove the state of artificial baldness, as a hen goes on laying if her eggs be taken from her, and the production of hair on the chin is at least quadrupled by the use of the razor. The natural balance is in this way destroyed. Whether the harm so done is great I cannot tell; I do not know that it is, but the strict balance which nature keeps between the production of hair, and the action of the lungs, is too constant and rigid to be altogether insignificant. We have all had too much opportunity for noticing how in people whose lungs are constitutionally weak, as in people with con

sumptive tendencies, the growth of hair is important of the hair-crops grown upon the excessive, even to the eyelashes. A skin human body. It preserves the brain from covered with downy hair is one of the marks of a scrofulous child, and who has not been saddened by the charm of the long eyelashes over the lustrous eye of the consumptive girl! The very anomalies of growth show that the hair must fulfil more than a trifling purpose in the system. There has been an account published in the present century by Ruggieri, of a woman, twenty-seven years of age, who was covered from the shoulders to the knees with black woolly hair, like that of a poodle dog. Very recently, a French physician has related the case of a young lady over whose skin, after a fever, hair grew so rapidly that, at the end of a month, she was covered with a hairy coat, an inch long, over every part of her body, except the face, the palms of the hands, and the soles of the

which was incurable, until, following the advice of an Italian surgeon, he allowed his beard to grow; and Mr. Chadwick has pointed out the fact that the sappers and miners of the French army, who are all men with fine beards, are almost entirely free from affections of the lungs and air-passages.

Mr. Chadwick regards the subject entirely from a sanitary point of view. He brought it under the discussion of the medical section engaged on sanitary inquiries at the York mecting of the British Association, and obtained among other support the concurrence of Dr. W. P. Alison of Edinburgh. We name that physician because he has since persuaded the journeymen masons of his own city to wear their beards as a preventive against consumption that prevailed among them.

for the purpose. the mustache and beard around the mouth.

Surely enough has been here said to make it evident that the Englishman who, at the end of his days, has spent about an entire year of his life in scraping off his beard, has worried himself to no purpose, has submitted to a painful, vexatious, and not merely useless, but actually unwholesome, custom. He has disfigured himself systematically throughout life, accepted his share of unnecessary tic-doloreaux and toothache, coughs and colds, has swallowed dust and inhaled smoke and fog out of complaisance to the social prejudice which happens just now to prevail. We all abominate the razor while we use it, and would gladly lay it down. Now, if we see clearly and I think the fact is very clearthat the use of it is a great blunder, and if we are no longer such a slovenly people as to be afraid that, if we kept our beards, we should not wash, or comb, or trim them in a decent way, why can we not put aside our morning plague and irritate our skin no more as we do now?

For that is another use of the mustache and beard. They protect the opening of the mouth, and filter the air for a man working in smoke or dust of any kind; they also act as a respirator, and prevent the inhalation into the lungs of air that is too frosty. Mr. Chadwick, years ago, was led to the discussion of this subject by observing how, in the case of I recommend nobody to grow a beard in some blacksmiths who wore beards and such a way as to isolate himself in appearance mustaches, the hair about the mouth was from his neighbors. Moreover, I do not at discolored by the iron dust that had been all desire to bring about such a revolution as caught on its way into the mouth and lungs. would make shaven chins as singular as The same observer has also pointed out and bearded chins are now. What I should much applied to his argument the fact that travel- prefer would be the old Roman custom, which lers wait, if necessary, until their mustaches preserved the first beard on a young man's have grown before they brave the sandy air face until it became comely, and then left it of deserts. He conceives, therefore, that the entirely a matter of choice with him whether absence of mustache and beard must involve he would remain bearded or not. Though it a serious loss to laborers in dusty trades, would be wise in an adult man to leave off such as millers and masons; to men employed shaving, he must not expect after ten or in grinding steel and iron, and to travellers twenty years of scraping at the chin, when he on dusty roads. Men who retain the hair has stimulated each hair into undue coarseabout the mouth are also, he says, much less ness and an undue rapidity of growth, that liable to decay, or achings of the teeth. To he can ever realize upon his own person the this list we would add, also, that apart from the incessant dust flying in town streets, and inseparable from town life, there is the smoke to be considered. Both dust and smoke do get into the lungs, and only in a small degree it is possible for them to be decomposed and removed by processes of life. The air-passages of a Manchester man, or of a resident in the city of London, if opened after death, are found to be more or less colored by the dirt that has been breathed. Perhaps it does not matter much; but surely we had better not make dustholes or chimney funnels of our THE ROCKET (eruca sativa) is used in salad lungs. Beyond a certain point this introduc- in Italy, though its smell is disagreeable, like tion of mechanical impurity into the delicate rancid bacon; and in Holland the yellow air-passages does cause a morbid irritation, stone-crop is eaten with lettuce.

beauty of a virgin beard. If we could introduce now a reform, we, that have been inured to shaving, may develop very good black beards, most serviceable for all working purposes, and a great improvement on bald chins; but the true beauty of the beard remains to be developed in the next generation on the faces of those who may be induced from the beginning to abjure the use of razors.

marked disease, and premature death. We had better keep our lungs clean altogether, THE garden CRESS was thought by the and for that reason men working in cities ancients to make those who ate it strong and would find it always worth while to retain brave; wherefore it was much used by the air-filter supplied to them by nature gladiators.

It seemed so to me. I had lost my position in the house where I had been so favored and happy; I had compromised my character from that day henceforward. I, who had meant to do such good in the world, had Does this description of my state of mind, lost my chance; for that sin clinging to my of my sense of guilt, seem overstrained? It conscience, the remembrance of which is just possible I give a little more coherence should read in everybody's face and altered to my reflections than they had at the time,