The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-24

vivaoitv. The very hush of the rough tones
that have thundered over Peloponnese as
Pericles bends over Aspasia, the little turns
and delicacies of phrase. the joyous serfdoms
and idlenesses of the manifest and most ener-
getic of men. tell of the triumph of pretty
woman.
1t is a triumph purchased, like most tri-
umphs, not without loss to the conqueror.
There is moHeur d'etTe belle as well as a
bonheur Life, if it gains in delicacy, loses
something in breadth and vigor from its very
concentration. There is something terribly
monotonous in the life of the pretty woman,
in the daily battle with ennui and boredom.
One ounce of real love would outweigh papa's
pettings in childhood OF mammals fuss about
her child's coming out. There are jealousies
of the school-room and jealousies of the
ballroom, little envies little spites that line
with thorns path which seems strewn with
roses. Then there is the plague of fops, the
eternal circle of vapid admirers, the eternal
drivel of men about town The prettiest lips
have pouted sometimes with longing for
the ugliness which secures their sisters chat
with man of sense The prettiest bosom
has heaved little rebelliously at the destiny
that consigns it to the stupidest
of eldest sons Perhaps it might
have been better to have been little less
charming and to have married that amusing
younger brother with an income of few
hundreds a year. Sometimes too, a pretty
woman will sigh a little over the infinite
littleness of her life, will long for the wider
world of politics and effort from which her
very prettiness and its train of results shuts
her out. Marriage is a mere catastrophe,
prisoning her existence, restricting her to a
single adorer in the place of thousand.
Then, too, the single adorer is so hard to
keep, and the thousand are SO easy to gain;
and so begins the strife between pleasure and
duty, the little warfare fought out under the
watchful eyes of tattling dowagers and i'm
pertinent fribbles. And then comes the in
evitable decay. 1t is easy to turn from the
glass, but it is impossible to turn from the
eyes that surround one, and every eye be-
comes mirror in which the pretty woman
reads the wreck of her charms. Younger
rivals pass her by, the circle of adorers thins
to few bores and old beaux men treat her
to second-rate stories or talk with their eyes
fixed on another corner of the room. There
is a shade of impertinence in the address of
the young Guardsman wall-fowers claim her
for their own. She has lived for year or SO,
and her whole existence is a mere looking
back to that year of life. Or it may be that
her prettiness simply passes on from phase to
phase, but even the prettiness of thirty-five,
fascinating as it often is, seldom fascinates its
possessor. She conquers new realms, but
she fails to reconquer the old. She brings
gushing undergraduates to her feet, her desk
is stuffed with the lyrics of unwhiskered
Strephons, but there is terrible irony about
it all, and she turns with sense of
the ridiculous from their sighs and pro-
testations. She is beaten, and she knows
it. Strephon has done enough if he has
served to cover her retreat. Perhaps the one
later prettiness that woman feels to have
real power, more real power than the pretti-
ness of youth is the prettiness of old age.
There is the charm of lifes afterglow over
the grey, quiet head, the pale, tender face,
lit up with a sweetness, pitifulness that
only experience and sorrow can give. 1t is
there, somehow, that we bring our troubles
and find peace. 1t is there, at any rate, that
we read a subtler and diviner beauty than in
the rosy cheek of girlhood, a beauty spiritu-
allied, mobile with every thought and emo
ton, yet restful with the rest of years. An
infinite tenderness and largeness of heart, a
dignity whose grace and naturalness robs it
of all sense of restraint, touch that has in
it all the genteness of earth, smile that has
in it something of the compassionateness of
heaven, this is the apotheosis of Pretty
| Women.