Beat the blanched almonds with a small quantity of water to a smooth paste, add the other ingredients, and mix intimately. A solution of cochineal will color it.
"Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?"--_Bulwer Lytton._
You would think, wouldn't you, that women would be good to themselves? But they aren't. Not a bit of it! They abuse their complexions with cosmetics as deadly as Mrs. Youngwife's first plum pudding. They "touch up" their tresses with acids terrific enough to remove the spots of a leopard. They paddle around in the rain like ducks in petticoats and overshoes, and then sit down and chat with the woman next door for a whole hour, so that the damp skirts can more properly inaugurate a horrible cold that will settle down and stay for six weeks or more. And their eyes--but that's a story in itself.
An oculist once said that every dot in a woman's veil was worth $5 to the gentlemen of his profession. The eye is being constantly strained to avoid these obstacles in its way, and, of course, it is weakened and tortured. Think of a woman paying $1.50 for something that will, in time, destroy her eyesight just as sure as fate! I leave it to you if she's not a ninny? But women do these things in spite of everything--except when the overworked eyes begin to pain, and then they're glad enough to do almost anything for quick relief.
To keep one's eyes in good, healthy condition, rigid laws must be laid down and carried out, though the heavens fall and the floods descend and everything gets up and floats out into Lake Michigan. You must not read in bed, and you must kiss good-by to that becoming black veil of many dots and spots.
When you crawl out of bed in the morning do not dig your fists into your eyes and rub and rub until, when at last you do open those sleepy "windows of the soul," there is two of everything in the room, and big black spots are whizzing through the air. Pressure on the eyeball flattens the lens of the eye, and is sure to produce myopia, or shortsightedness. If the eyes are not inflamed at all they should be washed every morning in moderately cold water. In case of inflammation an application of hot water and milk in equal parts will be found most beneficial. Dry with a piece of old, soft linen, being sure to wipe inward toward the nose so as not to issue invitations to those horrors of womankind--crow's feet! Great care should be taken to keep all foreign substances, especially soap and other irritants, from the delicate skin of the lids, and particularly from the still more sensitive eyeballs.