The latter clause shows that our great-grandmothers were quite _au fait_
with the nostrums of the present day, with "pargetting, painting,
slicking, glazing, and renewing old rivelled faces."

Many pretty rules may be found in old books and diaries, that are of New
England, rules "to make the face fair" and to "make sweet the mouth."

"Take the flowers of Rosemary and seeth them in VVhite VVine, with
which wash your face, and if you drink thereof it wil make you have
a sweet breath."

Maids were also told to gather the sweet May dew from the grass in the
early morning to make a fair face, and like Sir Thomas Overbury's
milkmaid, "put all face-physic out of countenance." And pretty it were
to see Cicely, Peg, and Joan in petticoat and sack or smock, each with a
"faire linnen cloath" a-dipping her rosy face in the fresh May dew.
Could this have been but a sly trick to get the lasses from their beds
betimes? We know the early hour at which Madam Pepys had to bathe her
mighty handsome face in the beautifying spring dew.

Patches were worn as eagerly, apparently, by Boston as by London belles.
Whitefield complained of the jewels, patches, and gay apparel donned in
New England. In scores of old newspapers after 1760 appear notices of
the sale of "Face Patches," "Patch for Ladies," "Gum Patches," etc., and
the frequency of advertisement would indicate a popular and ready sale.

With regard to the bathing habits of our ancestors but little can be
said, and but little had best be said. Charles Francis Adams writes,
with witty plainness, "If among personal virtues cleanliness be indeed
that which ranks next to godliness, then judged by the nineteenth
century standards, it is well if those who lived in the eighteenth
century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what they
lacked of the former." He says there was not a bath-room in the town of
Quincy prior to the year 1820. And of what use would pitchers or tubs of
water have been in bed-rooms in the winter time, when if exposed over
night solid ice would be found therein in the morning? The washing of
linen in New England homes was done monthly; it is to be hoped the
personal baths were more frequent, even under the apparent difficulties
of accomplishment. I must state, in truth, though with deep
mortification, that I cannot find in inventories even of Revolutionary
times the slightest sign of the presence of balneary appurtenances in
bed-room