No Excuse for Homely Faces

To be the possessor of a homely face is to some people the bane of existence. Lotions and face powders, washes and soaps, massage and face feeding, have been vainly tried until the heart hath grown sick and the mind weary of the effort of attempting to transform a homely face into a thing of joy and beauty. But no longer need this fear turn pale the rosy cheeks of ambitious maidens, or wither the lily complexions of young ladies whose faces are not all that they might be, or emaciate the Venus de Milo contour of the figure with which nature has blessed not a few women, though niggardly in her bestowal of facial beauty. The riddle has been solved, the problem has been answered, the mystery has been unlocked and no longer is there need or necessity for homely faces, that is, if we are to place much credence in a highly lauded discovery of the famous electrician Nikola Tesla. According to this eminent scientist, it has been dermatological microbes in the cuticle which has prevented all women from having rosy and lily complexions, and from giving their faces a beauty that would enrapture the minds of men and hold them captives to the chariot wheels of their facial fascinations. Long and arduously did he labor to find a remedy that would exterminate these destroyers of beauty, and to eradicate from existence the pests that have robbed the daughters of Eve of the sumptuousness which is the heritage of every one of them. He now makes claim that that remedy is to be found in the mysterious effects of the electrical current. In his research he has tried the power of the current on a large painted globe, and, so the story goes, noted that the paint came off in flakes. In a like manner it was applied to the human body through the feet and arms; it caused the outer cover of foreign matter and microbes to drop off in a shower, leaving the skin as clean and as fresh, as soft and as fair as that of a young babe, who has not been in this world long enough to gain a wealth of facial microbes. Wondrous is this discovery to insure the gift of beauty as long as life endures. With a fresh, pure skin, without spot or wrinkle, comes pulchritude to all the daughters of Eve. With it there will be no ravages of age, no crow’s-foot, no attempt of the cheeks to crawl into the cheek bones, no scragginess of the neck; every grandmother will present as beautiful a picture as her granddaughter, while, with the aid of a wig and a set of false teeth, the grandfathers will prove strong rivals to their grandsons in the race for the favors of fair damsels. But, like many another good thing, this method of insuring beauty has its drawbacks, and one of these is that it demands the price of eternal vigilance, and another that as aspirants for this dazzling facial brilliancy, women must delve down into their pocket-books and buy a special battery invented by Professor Tesla; because these microbes that light upon the skin are as countless as the atoms that make up the smoke from the furnace of Breaker Island, and they dance through the air like particles of dust in a sunbeam, and, to prevent them from setting up their thrones on our faces, and from there carrying on their campaigns of ravage and devastation, there is necessity of continual shocks of electricity and of constant baths of alcohol and of a delicate process of massage.

In the words of the old philosopher, the ladies of the day should shout Eureka! Eureka! For centuries they and their predecessors have sought and sighed for the great secret of beauty, and at last they have, but to stretch forth their hand to turn the button of an electric battery, to let the muscles of their faces dance and twitch and twitch and dance under the magic spell of its current, to wet a face sponge with alcohol and to gently manipulate the muscles with the fingers, and then; behold, they have the priceless pearl for which Cleopatra would have given all the realms which she possessed. In search of this faultless complexion thousands of women have spent immense fortunes. Stories are even told of a noblewoman in Hungary who bathed in the blood of young girls, murdered for the express purpose of providing a wash to restore bloom and softness to her fading flesh. And now that at last the scientist has found the fountain of youth, the faded belle, the withering matron and the old dowager can slyly have snugly concealed in the corner of their boudoir the very treasure for which Ponce de Leon marched and fought and died without finding, and it is all to be had with an odor of alcohol, a shock of the battery, and a twist of the wrist.