BLACK-HEADS AND FLESH WORMS.

[Illustration:  A REGULAR FLESH WORM GREATLY MAGNIFIED.]

This is a minute little creature, scientifically called Demodex folliculorum, hardly visible to the naked eye, with comparatively large fore body, a more slender hind body and eight little stumpy processes that do duty as legs.  No specialized head is visible, although of course there is a mouth orifice.  These creatures live on the sweat glands or pores of the human face, and owing to the appearance that they give to the infested pores, they are usually known as “black-heads.”  It is not at all uncommon to see an otherwise pretty face disfigured by these ugly creatures, although the insects themselves are nearly transparent white.  The black appearance is really due the accumulation of dirt which gets under the edges of the skin of the enlarged sweat glands and cannot be removed in the ordinary way by washing, because the abnormal, hardened secretion of the gland itself becomes stained.  These insects are so lowly organized that it is almost impossible to satisfactory deal with them and they sometimes cause the continual festering of the skin which they inhabit.

REMEDY.—­Press them out with a hollow key or with the thumb and fingers, and apply a mixture of sulphur and cream every evening.  Wash every morning with the best toilet soap, or wash the face with hot water with a soft flannel at bedtime.

[Illustration:  A HEALTHY COMPLEXION.]

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LOVE.

  But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
  As love’s young dream.—­MOORE.

  All love is sweet,
  Given or returned.  Common as light is love,
  And its familiar voice wearies not ever.—­SHELLEY.

  Doubt thou the stars are fire,
  Doubt that the sun doth move;
  Doubt truth to be a liar,
  But never doubt I love.—­SHAKESPEARE.

  Let those love now who never loved before,
  Let those that always loved now love the more.

1.  LOVE BLENDS YOUNG HEARTS.—­Love blends young hearts in blissful unity, and, for the time, so ignores past ties and affections, as to make willing separation of the son from his father’s house, and the daughter from all the sweet endearments of her childhood’s home, to go out together and rear for themselves an altar, around which shall cluster all the cares and delights, the anxieties and sympathies, of the family relationship; this love, if pure, unselfish, and discreet, constitutes the chief usefulness and happiness of human life.

2.  WITHOUT LOVE.—­Without love there would be no organized households, and, consequently, none of that earnest endeavor for competence and respectability, which is the mainspring to human effort; none of those sweet, softening, restraining and elevating influences of domestic life, which can alone fill the earth with the glory of the Lord and make glad the city of Zion.  This love is indeed heaven upon earth; but above would not be heaven without it; where there is not love, there is fear; but, “love casteth out fear.”  And yet we naturally do offend what we most love.