The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1883-09-13
The Melancholy Third Sex.

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ans toilet-table, and her many visits to
her mirror, are subjects of ridicule
among the strong-minded of her sex.
Men laugh at them as the amiable signs
of a not unbecoming vanity. Those
who look little deeper into the life of
that butterfly of our civilization, the
woman with charms, will perceive that
these things are a mere matter of busi-
ness to her. Every morning when she
rises she looks to see if she wakes as
fresh as ever; when she dresses she OBJ
serves herself with anxiety as to wheth-
er there is any giying-way in her APP
pearance. Ii there is any, without
doubt or hesitation it must be repaired.
And if nature is not strong enough to
mend the breach then art must come to
the rescue, and with good reason, for
the pretty woman knows better than
any one else the intrinsic value of her
appearance. Without it she would go
under; at the mere thought of losing it
she feels like drowning person. And
why? Because, as every one knows,
consciously or unconseiously, society
consists of men, women and a third
class-those ordinary people who have
no claim to any particular distinction,
and who do not seem to have much sex
about them. This last variety of the
human species is generally composed of
females. A man is man, however
grizzled and wor1d-worn he may be; he
is almost always capable of rising to an
occasion; he will find intoxicatlon in the
society of a pretty woman though he be
a grandpapa. and to her he is a man,
and she puts on her pretty manners
for him. But woman, unless she has
some attraction, some claim to appear
ance, some charm all her own, is hardly
woman. She may be nice person,
belonging to set of nice people; she
may be distinguished by rank, or talent,
or gifts of conversation; but she is of the
third sex. Men do not strut for her, or
make fools of themselves for her, or feel
that their eyes are helplessly attracted
to her, or that their feet walk toward
her of their own accord. She may be
feminine, marriageable, and endowed
with all the most modest and winning
instincts of her sex; but if she has no
appearance and no charm, she is out of
the running. Her head goes under
water. There is something caressing,
voluptuous, beautiful in the mere word
woman when it is used to describe
one who is of the cream of her sex. 1t
needs no adjective. The favorite words
of the ay-''charming, 'spretty'
are inadequate. When man throws
his life, his fortune, his reputation
away, and it is whispered that it was
"al for woman" no adjective is
needed. She may have been no one
mere nobody; yet she must have pos
sessed that power which makes queen
out of a nobody, and converts every
chair she may choose to seat herself
attraction. Who can wonder, realizing
the difference in life to woman with
appearance and woman without it,
that she should use every trick at her
command to keep those charms which
God has given her? Having known the
brilliant life of the butterfly. to become
a mere working bee in the garden would
be to her insupportable. Instead of
taking life in both hands and enjoying
it to the full, it would all slip past her.
Only one class of men can ever look
in the mirror with the same living
earnestness as pretty woman, and
these are actors. A handsome actor,
intended by Nature to play the young
lovers, and without any wish to Ego in
for character acting" watches his glass
as other men watch stocks and shares.
When once age honestly shows its mark
on his face, defying the rouge-pot to
hide it, then, like the faded beauty, he
must say good-by to the best of his
life. But he has much left. He is still
a man, and the marks on his face do
him no harm in any other career He
can still make men like him; he can still
fire women,s hearts. The world is even
yet before him. But to the woman
whose mirror tells the unvarnished tale
that age, or, worse still, ill-health and
anxiety, have taken away from her the
charm which she once had-to her
there is no future. She may live again
in her children; but as an individual
her day is done. Men can never know
the passionate bitterness which rises in
the heart of woman thus deprived,
against her will, of all that has made
her life sweet To be flung by the
ravages of fever, sickness, or misery
into the melancholy third sex which fills
up all the corners and crevices of society
this is a fate bitter indeed-a horrible
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