A philanthropist has published a little book which interests persons who in civilized society form a respectable minority, and in the savage world an overpowering majority.  But, savage or polite, almost all men must shave, or must be shaved, and the author of “A Few Useful Hints on Shaving,” is, in his degree, a benefactor to his fellow-creatures.  The mere existence of the beard may be accounted for in various ways; but, however we explain it, the beard is apt to prove a nuisance to its proprietor.  Speculators of the old school may explain the beard as part of the punishment entailed on man with the curse of labour.  The toilsome day begins with the task of scraping the chin and contemplating, as the process goes on, a face that day by day grows older and more weary.  No race that shaves can shirk the sense of passing time, or be unaware of the approach of wrinkles, of “crow’s-feet,” of greyness.  Shaving is the most melancholy, and to many people the most laborious of labours.  It seems, therefore, more plausible (if less scientific) to look on the beard as a penalty for some ancient offence of our race, than to say with Mr. Grant Allen, and perhaps other disciples of Mr. Darwin, that the beard is the survival of a very primitive decoration.  According to this view man was originally very hairy.  His hair wore off in patches as he acquired the habits of sleeping on his sides and of sitting with his back against a tree, or against the wall of his hut.  The hair of dogs is not worn off thus, but what of that?  After some hundreds of thousands of years had passed, our ancestors (according to this system) awoke to the consciousness that they were patchy and spotty, and they determined to eradicate all hair that was not ornamental.  The eyebrows, moustache, and, unfortunately, the beard seemed to most races worth preserving.  There are, indeed, some happy peoples who have no beards, or none worth notice.  Very early in their history they must have taken the great resolve to “live down” and root out the martial growth that fringes our lips.  But among European peoples the absence of a beard has usually been a reproach, and the enemies of Njal, in ancient Iceland, could find nothing worse to say of him than that he was beardless.  Mehemet Ali bought sham beards for his Egyptian grenadiers, that they might more closely resemble the European model.  The soldiers of Harold thought that the Normans were all priests, because they were “shavelings;” and it is only natural that soldiers should in all countries be bearded.  It is almost impossible to shave during a campaign.  Stendhal, the French novelist and critic, was remarkable as the best, perhaps the only, clean-shaved man in the French army during the dreadful retreat from Moscow.  In his time, as in that of our fathers, ideas of beauty had changed, and the smooth chin was as much the mark of a gentleman as the bearded chin had been the token of a man.