A Defense Of Pretty Women

After all, is the world so very absurd in ; ts love of protty womon ? Is woman so ery ridioutoui in her chase after beauty 't ' A pretty woman is doing a woman's work ' in the worlil, not making speeches, nor ] making puddings, but wakiug life sunnier and more Man has ' sworn tho pur-uit of beauty ultogothor. : Does he eeek it for himsolf, ho is gueasod ' to be frivolous, ie is guossed to be poetio, ' there aio whispers thut lus mórula are no ' botter thun they ehould be. In a society ' resolute to be ugly there ia no post for an Adonis, but that of a modal or guardfiman. But woman does for mankind what , man has ceasod to do. Her aim froni very childhood is to bo boautiful. Kven as a school girl shu notos tho progress of her charnis, tho doopening color of her hair, the growing symmutry of her arm, the riponing contour of her cheek. We wutch with silent intorest tho mysterious reveries of the maiden ; sho is dreaming of a coming beauty, and panting for tho glories of eighteeu. Insensibly, sho becotnes an artist, her room i a studio, her glass an aoadomy. Tho joy of her toilet isthojoyof Jtaphacïlovur hia canvas, of Alichaol Angelo over hin marble. Hhe is creating boauty in tho silonce and the loneliness of her chamber ; she grows like any iirt-oreation, the result of patienca, uf hope, of thousand touchings and retouchings. Woman is novyr perfoct ; nver complete. A restless night undoes the beauty of tho day ; sunshiue blurs tho evanescent coloring of her cheek, frost nips tho tendel outlines of her faco into sudden harshness. Caro plows its linos acrosg lier brow ; motherhood destroys tho elastic lightnoBS of hor form ; the bloom of her cheelt, the quick nusb. of her eye, fade and vanish as the yesrs go by. But woiiiiin is still truo to hor ideal. Shu won't know whea she is beaten, and sho manuges to stoal new viotorius oven in hor dafeat. She inventa now conceptiona of womanly graco ; she rallies at i'orty, and fronts with the beanty of womanliood ; hi' nmkesa last stand at sixty, with tlio beautyof age. BhefftllplikeCfflsar, wrapping hfer mantle around her - " buried in woolen ' 'twould a saint proToke '. " Death listens iitifully to tho longings it' a Hïetime, and th wrinkled i'aco Biuiles with soinatliing of tho prettineM of üighteen. Kanny Fern says that whon sho " nees a pretty uian with an applo hoad and a raspberry moustaohe with six hairs in it, paint on bis oheek, and a little jot of a goatee on his chin, with pretty littlc blinking etuds on shirt bosom and a Httle neok-tie that looks as if it were rumpled, sho always feels a donire to uip him with ft piiir of sugar tongs, drop liiin gently into a pot of creani, and Btrew pink rose lea ves over tho little remains.'