The Daily Spy

LETTERS TO COUNTRY GIRLS.

We commend the following article from the "Pittsburgh Visiter," to all our female readers. Mrs. Swisshelm is doing her sex a good by writing such Lectures. There is more truth, philosophy and common sense in this lecture, than in two-thirds of the volumes written by the Medical men of the world.-True Democrat.

Well girls, I got such a scolding from one of your number for writing no letter last week, that I am afraid to neglect it this time. You know I said I could quilt almost as fast as two of you. The reason is, I take care of my hands.-- One half of you are too proud to do this. You would not be caught putting a glove on to sweep, or hoe, or weed in the garden, because you think it would look as if you wanted to be fine ladies. If you see any one taking care of her hands, or careful to wear a sunbonnet to preserve her complexion, you say she is "proud and stuck up." But it is you who are proud -too proud to think you require any care to look nice. You have an idea you look well enough at any rate. So you just make yourself as rough and coarse as ever you can, by way of being independent.- Your hands grow as stiff and hard as if you held a plough, and swung a scythe and when you take a needle you can scarcely feel it in your fingers. This is wrong. There are many things which women ought to do, which require your hands to be soft and pliable, and they should be careful to keep them so, in order to make them useful. Every woman who lives in the country should knit herself a pair of gloves, with long fingers closed at the tops-not mits, to let the fingers get hard. There should be a piece of ribbed work at the wrist to make them stay on. When you use your hoe, rake or broom, put on your gloves-when you take hold of a skillet, pot or kettle handle, take a cloth to keep your hands from being seared and hardened. When you wash clothes or dishes. do not have water so hot as to feel unpleasant. Many girls scald their hands until they can put them into water almost boiling. Such hands are unfit to use a needle or a pin. They are not so good to hold a baby or dress a wound. Take care of your hands, and do not forget your faces. I have seen so many country girls, who, at sixteen, had complexions like alabaster, and at 26, their faces would look like a runnet bag, that had hung six weeks in the chimney corner. One reason of this is, they do not wear a bonnet to protect them from the sun. Another reason is, the habit they have of baking their faces before a wood fire. I have seen some women stand before a great roasting fire and cook, until I thought their brains were as well stewed as the chickens: and they would get so used to it they would make no attempt to shield their heads from the heat. Nay, they will set down in the evening and bake their faces by the hour; and this is one of the reasons why American women grow old, withered and wrinkled, fifteen years before their time. But another and the greatest reason is, your diet. People in this country live too well and eat too much hot bread and meat. Country people usually eat richer food than those who live in the cities, and that is a reason why with all their fresh air, their average age is little greater than that of city folks Thousands of beautiful, blooming country girls make old, sallow-faced themselves before they are thirty, by coffee, smoking tobacco, and eating hot bread and meat. They shorten their lives by these habits about as much as city ladies with their various cures. do not know what you think it, girls, but I think it is about as much a disgrace for women to get old, brown, withered eating too much, as it is for men to get it by drinking too much. Very few people think it a disgrace to have a billious fever; but I had just as leave the doctor would tell me that I was drunk as that I was billious. The one would come from drinking too much, the other from eating too much? All this is a serious matter, for it affects health and life; and the reason why I talk about your complexion in speaking of it is, that everybody loves to look well whether they will acknowledge it or not. Now, people cannot look well unless they are well; and no one can be well very long who does not try to take care of herself. The woman who roasts her head by the fire, disorders her blood, brings on head-aches, injures her health, and makes her face look like a piece of leather.— When she swallows hot coffee, hot bread, greasy victuals and strong pickles, she destroys her stomach, rots her teeth, shortens her life, and makes herself too ugly for any use, except scaring the crows off the corn.

J. G. S.