The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-05-23
Cooking Women.

The ethnologists have long contended that
we are growing black, that time is ayenging
the fading aborigines of this land and the ex-
tinct autocLthones Of Europe by transform
ing their conquerors into the image of the
conquered. Our Fate does not come stealthi-
ly treading on wool but clothed ia the splen-
dors of the sunlight; and our darkening
skins are her warning signals. Many years
ago Draper called attention to the fact that
all over Europe the brown type of man is in
creasing at the expense of the pale. 1t was
to be expected in this country that the same
influences which bronzed the Indian would
in process of time bronze his conqueror and
bright in the Roman days, when the red
haired Gauls turned the flight of the eagles,
as now. Europe then however was vaga-
bond, half-naked and half-starved. To-day
in its close houses, wrapped in its blankets
and bending over its furnaces it is doing itself
brown. These and kindred influences have
appreciably raised the temperature Of its win
tiers. The cooking of men, done in the trop-
les as OF old by the sunbeam, is done in the
temperate zone by artificial heat.
Men however have taken no uneasiness at
the slow process by which they are roasted
until fit to be served up by Time, the devour-
er of all things. Indeed in this country the
passage of the constitutional amendment
brought the man cooked to crisp, even to
his hair, into fashion: But our tranquility
bids fair to be disturbed by the late intruding
thought that the cooking of men necessarily
involves the cooking of women, that the
blonde is becoming rarer year by year, that
she too is in process CT extinction, sacrificed
upon the altar of the sun-god, that the day is
approaching when we shall no longer look
upon her calm movements and statuesque
attitudes, her golden hair and day-dreaming
eyes, but shall be compassed about by the
blackness of night. The thought was pain
full surprise, for we all trusted to the proven
blal pugnacity of the blondes who, as Ammia-
nus certified centuries ago, "bite, scratch and
even KICK" for success in the struggle for ex-
istence, and never for moment entertained
the belief that they could be overcome by
their dark sisters. But in this conflict fate is
against them, black is the winning color, and
the hour is certain to come when golden
tress will be so rare as to justify an apotheosis
like that given to Berenice's hair. With the
disappearance of the blonde much of the ro-
nance and tragedy will go out Of life, for
from the blonde ranks have come the notable
women of the world, like Helen, Sappho, As
pasta, Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia, Elizabeth,
Joan of Arc-and Brinvilliers. But some-
thing will be left. Aphrodite was the black
eyed one of Olympus.
An attempt has been made to shift the
blame of the exticion of the blonde from
the immortals to man. A contributor to
a late number of Appleton's Journal turns
of our responsibility. He boldly asserts that
the growing preponderance of the brunette is
due to the principle of conjugal selection, and
affirms that the probability of marriage is in
proportion to the darkness of the hair. He
forti6es his position by statistics too. Not a
few ethnologists sustain him in this view,
and picture as a consequence of the changing
taste of man, the woman of the future as a
dark and sparkling beauty, with hair of raven
black and cheeks of dusky bloom. But in
New England, our writer admits, man is still
faithful to his first love, and the blonde girl
with grey eyes and pink-tinted palms, the
woman Brahmin, the Margaret Fuller type,
is in predominance over the brunette in the
propOrtion of four to three
1t is indisputable however, no matter
what may be the correct theory of dis
appearance, that the blonde is dying out.
Let us then cherish her very tenderly as
long as she stays.