only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. Thewas that her nails were just due to good genes.

Still, I thought I would ask her: was there a secret to her pretty nails?

Surprisingly, she said there was.

Her secret, she said, was that she had recently started to buff her nails regularly.

Having never heard of nail buffing before, she went on to explain to me that nail buffing was a process that involved polishing nails with increasingly smooth surfaces until the nails were shiny and smooth.

The results she had achieved were simply stunning!

Back to me and my unpreservable manicures.

The way forward, I decided, was to try out the secret Liliane had shared with me so long ago.

Maybe, just maybe, I too could have pretty nails that would last longer than my manicures did by using this simple procedure.

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