Long hair

“ The man's hair is allowed to grow long on the crown of the scalp, and to hang freely over the back of the neck, in some cases reaching as far as the middle of the back. This long hair is never plaited, but is sometimes screwed up in a knot on the top of the head and fastened with a skewer. ”

“ Of the two, the cut of the hair is a better indication of date than the beard or moustache, which were worn more at pleasure. Occasionally long hair is found in conjunction with the beard, and in other cases some men remained faithful to the earlier fashion. ”

“ The long luxuriant and glossy tresses of the Typee damsels often attracted my admiration. A fine head of hair is the pride and joy of every woman’s heart. Whether against the express will of Providence, it is twisted upon the crown of the head and there coiled away like a rope on a ship’s deck; whether it be stuck behind the ears and hangs down like the swag of a small window-curtain; or whether it be permitted to flow over the shoulders in natural ringlets, it is always the pride of the owner, and the glory of the toilette. ”

“ The loveliness of long hair in woman seems never to have been disputed, and it had also a very wide acceptance as a mark of masculine strength and beauty. St. Paul, it is true, says that it is a shame to a man to have long hair, but his opinion is not to be taken without reservation, for both the 273 traditions of poetry and painting give to the Saviour, and also to the Beloved Disciple, long locks of curling brown hair. The Greek warriors and most of the Asiatic nations prided themselves on their long hair, and the Romans gave a great significance to it by making it the badge of a freeman. ”

“ I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes: to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation before any one else beheld it. They would not shut: they seemed to sneer at my attempts; and his parted lips and sharp white teeth sneered too! ”

“ Most of the men of the lower classes wear their hair in a very ugly fashion,—the front and top of the head being shaved, the long hair from the back and sides being drawn up and tied, then waxed, tied again, and cut short off, the stiff queue being brought forward and laid, pointing forwards, along the back part of the top of the head. ”

“ When, some years ago, long hair was much more fashionable than it is at present, great numbers of young women in Germany suffered their hair to grow, and had it cut, from time to time, as a source of emolument. The notion that long hair is frequently cut from the heads of persons after they are dead is totally unfounded, since the uncertainty of such supply would alone render it impracticable. ”

“ They curled their hair, even their beards, wore gold ornaments, diligently brushed their teeth and polished their finger-nails. “They arrange their hair so tenderly,” he writes, “that when walking they never touch one another, in order not to disturb it.” It is usual in states where women are dominant for the men to wear long hair and pay particular attention to their barbering. ”

“ The men’s heads are covered with thick, flowing masses of long hair, of which they take great care, making their wives, or other female relatives, brush it out carefully at least once a day. Very few appeared to have grey hair ”

“ The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are the only portions of the skin unfurnished with hairs. Their length and thickness varies considerably, from the softest down which is scarcely visible, to the long hair of the scalp and beard. The estimated thickness of a hair of the head is one-tenth of a line. Observations seem to show that flaxen is the finest, and black the coarsest hair. In females the hair of the head ordinarily measures from twenty to thirty inches, but in some instances it attains a much greater length ”

“ And suppose they could have long hair, but cut it for their own comfort, the act says very little for their gallantry. I have no need to point to the chignons, braids, and artifices which women use to lengthen their hair in order to please men, who decline to return the compliment, even to a degree that would be vastly becoming to them. ”

“ How good it did feel to be bare-headed, after all that long winter! Cool inside your hair at the roots, and warm outside where the sun pressed on it. Cool wind and warm sun, two different things that added up to make one lovely feel for a little girl. The way your hair tugged at its roots, all streaming away; every single little hair tied tight to your head at one end, and yet so wildly loose at the other; tight, strong, firm, and yet light and limber and flag-flapping . ”

“ No one in these days would think the King of Persia’s porter, seen by Tavernier, deserved a double pension because he could tie his moustaches behind his neck; for something very like this may be seen any afternoon in Hyde Park; there is a fashion in such things, and Nature is by no means niggardly in her gifts to man. But what is meant by an extraneous growth of hair is very different from this, and by no means ornamental. We allude to cases where the whole body has been covered by a growth of long hair. Some miserable Fakirs, in India, have been seen clothed with hair several inches long. ”

“ Her hair had never grown long, not much longer indeed than was just necessary to twist into the knot behind which proved her to be grown up, and it remained full of curl and ready to break the smoothness of outline then thought necessary, on the smallest provocation. ”

“ Although hair is of a tubular construction, yet all varieties are not of a completely cylindrical form; a curl is the result of all flat-sided or oval hairs, the exceeding oval being the unfailing characteristic of the negro race. A cross section of a hair, if circular, denotes the long, soft, and lank fibre of a cold northern animal; but if the cross section shows an extreme flat-sided hair, that hair will be crisp and frizzled, and of a tropical extraction. ”

“ His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow ”

“ The hair is so arranged that it forms ridges from the front to the back of the head. When sufficiently long, that is about a foot, it is dressed with fat mixed with charcoal, and then divided in the centre, that the curls may fall down on each side, with a band round the head to keep the curls in their place, and to preserve them from dirt or dust. ”

“ Both men and women suffer no hair to grow on their bodies except on the head. They wear the hair long and take good care of it so that it will grow. The men bind their hair on the crown of the head with a small piece of gauze, and the women bind it with bands made of the hair itself. ”

“ It is the beginning ever to cut, that makes all the difference. I hazard a theory, that no hair of the head or beard should ever be cut, or needs it, any more than the eyebrows or eyelashes. The finest head of hair I know is one which was never cut. It is not too long; it is soft and thick. The secret where to stop growing is in the end of the native untouched hair. If you cut it off, the poor hair does not know when to stop ”

“ Then, every young lady, without exception, seemed to have one kind of hair, and that the kind which was rather suggestive of the term woolly. Every sort of wild abandon of frowzy locks seemed to be in vogue; in some cases the hair appearing [Pg 578] to my vision nothing but a confused snarl, in which glittered tinklers, spangles, and bits of tinsel, and from which waved long pennants and streamers of different-colored ribbons. ”

“ The hair is jet black, without a single variation of tinge, and luxuriantly long and thick, and thus dressed remains for the week,—about the usual interval between their laborious process of bathing;—nor can they conceive the comfort other people find in frequent brushing and combing the hair. ”

“ Hall’s tract “On the Loathsomeness of Long Hair,” wherein he complained that “some have long lockes at their eares, as if they had four eares, or were prick-eared; some have a little long locke onely before, hanging down to their noses, like the taile of a weasall; every man being made a foole at the barber’s pleasure, or making a foole of the barber for having to make him such a foole.” And in Lyly’s play of Midas, it is asked, “Will you have a low curl on your head, like a ball, or dangling locks, like a spaniel? ”

“ The hair of the women is all drawn away from their faces, and is worn in chignons, and the men, when they don't shave the front of their heads and gather their back hair into a quaint queue drawn forward over the shaven patch, wear their coarse hair about three inches long in a refractory undivided mop. ”

“ Their hair is worn in plaits, artificially lengthened by means of horsehair; their complexion, when free from paint, is of a ruddy healthy colour, and their eyes, which are shaded with long black lashes, are soft and clear. ”

“ The monuments as well as the writers teach us that men wore their hair long, in the next period also, down to the fifth century; we sometimes find hair of such length and thickness depicted that it seems almost incredible that a man’s hair could have been so much developed, even by the most careful treatment. ”

“ Probably many allowed their hair to grow long, for we find physicians taxed to their utmost to supply concoctions which would produce heavy growths of hair, strengthen it and prevent it from turning grey. ”

“ While the heroic citizens rejoiced in their newly acquired liberty and freedom from wigs, the chaste matrons went in search of false hair, to imitate the classic beauties of antiquity. In England, however sudden the transformations in high life, the change, agreeably to the genius of the people, was rather the growth of a new system than the uprooting of the old. The old wig decayed slowly beside the growth of a new crop, and lingered long in many a humble circle, became the oracle of the club, and enjoyed the dignity of the arm-chair and the repose of the chimney-corner ”

“ Another turn of the wheel of fashion has given us a simple mode of dressing the hair, which is well adapted to the average English head, and which is fully explained by the accompanying sketch. It may be taken as a safe rule, when the forehead is low and face small, that the hair may be drawn back with advantage, but a long face is generally improved by arranging the hair in soft curls on the forehead, and by waving it slightly at the sides, which adds to the apparent width of the countenance. ”

“ Light hair is generally most becoming when curled. For a round face, the curls should be made in short, half ringlets, reaching a little below the ears. For an oval face, long and thick ringlets are suitable ”

“ Both sexes eradicate the Hair from under their armpits, a custom in these hot climates almost essential to cleanliness; the men also pluck out their beards, for which purpose the better sort carry always a pair of silver pincers hanging round their necks. Some however wear a little hair on their upper lips but that they never suffer to grow long. ”

“ Most Eastern people have been celebrated for the length and beauty of their hair, and if the Assyrians were as well provided with it as the inhabitants of Persia were in the days of Darius, or as they now are, they would have had little occasion for a wig.”
The hair of females, in the sculptures, is usually represented in long ringlets, sometimes plaited and braided, and at other times confined in a net. The modern fashion of wearing the hair in a net is therefore a revival of a very ancient one. ”

“ It seems when grey hairs appear they are carefully pulled out; as time moves on they increase so fast that they would require to shave the head often, so, to cover their shame, they take to wigs, which represent them as having long, flowing, curly hair, as in youth. ”

“ They frequently dedicated it to the gods, on important occasions of marriage, victory, escape from death and danger, and the burial of friends. Different styles of wearing the hair, was resorted to for denoting the various grades, or positions in life, of the people, some wearing it quite long, others short, and some dressing it in a peculiar manner,—each style, or length, being according to the condition, wealth, or social standing of the wearer. ”

“ Some of this hair comes from poor women, but the staple product is from the heads of boys who wear their hair parted in the middle, and plaited in a long braid, which hangs down their backs. At marriage, they cut this off, and bind what remains in a tight, round knot on the top of the scalp, using pins or not as they please. ”

“ Hoshiko was silent.
"Be not afraid, beloved," Yoné said. "I will be true always until we meet in the heavens. Always I will be your widow with blackened teeth if you fall—my hair blowing at a shrine. Think! But for me there will be no one to keep the lamps alight before you if you die—but for me. And I—they shall never fail. For, if you fall, I will wait as I have done—keeping the lamps, hoping that you will hold out your hand in the black Meido when I pass to death, and that then we shall, somehow, never part. Oh, beloved, there have been suitors and suitors and always suitors! ”

“ The men of this band wear the hair long, and suffer it to hang negligently about the shoulders. Some of them have a braid behind, which is garnished with bits of red cloth, small pieces of tin, &c. and descends nearly to the ground, being sometimes eked out with the hair of a horse's tail. Among the old men were several who had suffered a number of scattering hairs on the face to become of considerable length, a violation of good manners, and a neglect of personal neatness, not often met with among the Indians, and excusable only in the old. ”