Finger-Tip Care.

A young married woman showed me her painfully cracked finger-tips.

“My hands are not used to housework yet,” she laughed.

“Are you doing anything for them?” I asked.

“Oh, I'll rub in some cold cream for a night or two, and they'll be all right—till next time.”

“But you've such pretty hands. It's a pity to spoil them. Can't you save them at all?”

“Well, I wear rubber gloves when I'm washing the ‘coloureds.’ That's a help.”

“Of course it is. How about dishes and vegetables?”

“Oh, I don't bother. It seems such a nuisance struggling into and out of gloves so many times a day. Do you think I'm careless? Perhaps I should take more trouble. I used to be terribly fussy about my hands before I was married.”

I gave her my ideas about hands.

It always makes me sorry when I see married women's hands looking cracked and stained, comparing so unfavourably with those of the unmarried. True, a housewife's hands need more care than an office girl's, though she has less time for it. But extra attention to hands is well worth while, if only to avoid that terrible cook-laundress inferiority that some women feel when in company. I've seen many a pair of hands hidden by evening bags or the edges of bridge tables.

Certainly it is a nuisance to have to don rubber gloves every time one washes dishes, but those extra seconds are well spent, for water is the enemy of beautiful hands. For housemaid tasks, such as mopping and dusting, cotton gloves are well worth while to guard against the drying and roughening effect of dust, which acts on the skin like fine grit.

Bed-time care is most important. If hands are cracked, use a mild ointment. Otherwise, rub in any recommended hand lotion (such as a mixture of mutton fat, glycerine and rose water) or even cold cream, paying special attention to the corners of the nails, where the skin is apt to become dry. The lotion may be well rubbed into the hands and the excess wiped off with cleansing tissues, or old gloves may be worn at night.

One friend tells me that she massages her hands and feet every night with olive oil. She then wears old cotton gloves and a pair of her husband's socks to bed. “Of course I look a fright,” she confided. “But at least my hands are respectable by day-light and I shan't have 'hot-water bottle’ feet.”

With the approach of cold weather, hand culture is still more important if one wishes to avoid that much-married look—and hands can be a terrible give-away!