Secondly, good teeth are essential to good looks. Brush the teeth regularly with a soft brush morning and night, especially at night. Be sure to go to bed at night with clean teeth.
Thirdly, look well to the ventilation of your bed-rooms. No one can have a clear skin who breathes bad air. Fresh air is a preventive of a multitude of diseases. Bad air is the cause of a great many premature deaths.
Fourthly, cleanliness of the entire body is of vast importance. Some one has said that “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” and some one else has added, “And soap is a means of grace.” Handsome people not only eat regularly and simply; they not only sleep regularly and look well to proper ventilation; but handsome people will take regular baths.
Fifthly, more than all else, in order to look well you must wake up the mind and soul. When the mind is awake, the dull, sleepy look passes away from the eyes. Keep thinking pleasant and noble thoughts; do not read trashy novels or books; read books which have something good in them. Talk with people who know something. Be often in the company of those who know more than you do. Hear lectures and sermons and profit by them. If we listen and understand and heed, the mind and soul are awakened. So much the better if the spiritual nature is aroused. Sometimes a plain face is really glorified with the love of God and of man which shines through it.
Lastly, keep a strong and vigorous body by taking plenty of wholesome outdoor exercise, and do all the good you can.
Patience is one of the marks of a high character. It might well be called the habit of closing the mind against disagreeable and annoying conditions. To acquire this habit so effectually as to hide even from one’s self any sense of suffering or offense from contact with such conditions is what the truly cultivated aim at. Life, it is true, is full of trying things, but to let the mind dwell upon them only serves to increase their offense to the feelings or the senses.
There are people, of course, who are incapable of self-concentration, and whose imagination, if left free to gad about, seems always to fix upon and exaggerate every element of disturbance. They live in what is called an elementary stage of moral discipline, and are perpetually fretting about things they cannot help. They are never able to shut down the will against any unpleasantness. They permit merely accidental conditions to exercise a kind of tyrannical sway over them, which, if their minds were once bent to the practice of putting up with things, would cease to present any annoyance whatever.