CANADIAN COMPLEXION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8343, 1 February 1913, Page 12

CANADIAN COMPLEXION

A Canadian journalist lias been poking fun at the chilliness of British homes. A writer in an English exchange retorts as follows:—To leave a window or a door open in a Canadian house when once the furnaces are working is a crime for which no punishment is too severe—as for the business offices, the marvel is that any work is done at all in them. Overheated, stuffy, unventilated, one would imagine that fresh air was poison by the way they avoid it. Even if they have windows looking out on to the street they never open them, and for choice they prefer their windows to open into the centre of their buildings, as there is then no possible risk of any inconsiderate fresh air fiend of an English person leaving them open for even a second. In consequence, tho universal complexion of tho town dwellers in Canada is a sickly pallor, and it is impossible to guess whether a woman is twentyfive or fifty from th© colour and texture of her skin, for after extreme youth they one and all acquire a sort of waxen, faded, yellowish look—an indescribably tired flabbiness of skin which is not tho result of age, but merely the result of steam heat. They look, in fact, very like hot-house flowers when they first begin to droop. It is pretty safe to say that you might search Canada from end to end and not find one native horn woman of forty who could boast of that firm, fresh healthiness of skin and colour which is the heritage of many Englishwomen whoso years approach tho allotted span of life.