'Leave well enough alone,' as the English say, is a piece of advice which may be followed with benefit in many circumstances of life.

How many excellent pictures have been spoiled by the finishing touch! How often have I heard art critics, after examining a beautiful portrait, exclaim, 'H'm, lÉchÉ!' Well, I cannot translate that French art expression better than by 'Too much retouched—too well finished!' This is a fault commonly found in women's portraits.

How many fortunes have been lost because people, instead of being satisfied with reasonable profits, waited for stocks to go still higher, and got caught in a financial crash!

Even in literature I see sad results, when authors follow too closely that principle laid down by Boileau for the elaboration of style: 'Polish and repolish it incessantly.'

Alas! how many stilted lines are due to the too strict obedience to this advice! What is too well finished often becomes far-fetched and unnatural.

How many sauces have been spoiled by cooks trying to improve what was already very good!

How many wings have been singed for not knowing how to keep at a respectful distance from the fire or the light!

No doubt there is such a thing as perfection; but who is perfect and what is perfect in this world, except that ineffable lady who, some weeks ago, took me severely to task for having written an article in which I advised my readers to be good, but not to overdo it?

The firmaments are perfect, some flowers are perfect, but these are not the work of man. Nature herself seems to have divided her gifts so as to have no absolute perfection in her creatures. The nightingale has song, but no plumage; the peacock has plumage, but his voice makes you stop your ears.

And the women! Well, yes, the women—let us speak of them.

Which of us, my dear fellow-men, has not admired a woman of ours whose toilet was finished? We thought she looked beautiful then, we admired her, and we put on our gloves proudly, saying:

'She is coming.' Yet she did not come. True, her hat was on and fixed when we saw her, and we thought that she was ready. Not a bit of it. She was not.

After she has finished dressing, and is absolutely ready to go out, she will begin to fret and potter about in her room for another hour. She goes from looking-glass to looking-glass. That is the time when she thinks of the finishing touches.

She pulls her hat a little more to the right, then a little more to the left, in order to ascertain how that hat can be improved. She touches and retouches her hair.

Her complexion is beautiful, a natural rosy pink, for which she ought to return thanks, all day long, to the most generous and kind Nature who gave it to her. But, at the last moment, she thinks that this, too, might be improved.

So she rubs her cheeks and puts more powder on them. The rubbing makes her cheeks so red that she has to subdue the colour. She works and works, and now takes it into her head that, being warm, her nose must be shining.

She takes the puff and puts powder on it. An hour before she was a woman who, in your eyes at all events, could not very well be improved.

Now she is ready, and emerges from her apartment. Her hair is undone behind and ruffed in front, her hat is too straight, and her face looks made-up. The rubbing has changed her lovely pink complexion into a sort of theatrical purple red.

You feel for her, because, being very proud of her complexion, you do not want your friends—you do not want anybody—to say: 'Oh, she is made-up.' And you own that she looks it, and altogether she does not look half so well as she did when she had finished dressing, and had not begun the finishing touches.

Beware, ladies! Many a most beautiful woman has been spoiled by the finishing touches.