The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-04-14
AMERICAN EYES.
An Expert Makes Study of Them and
Generalizes Thereon.

An Expert Makes a Study of Them and
Generalizes Thereon.
New York Tribune.
Generalizing about eyes is by no means an
easy task, particularly in a city like New
YORK, where the intermixture and intermar-
| rage OF races has oblterated or obscured all
national types, A lady who assumes to be
an authority on such questions AYERS that
DARK eyes predominant in this city in the
| ratio of seventy-five IN every hundred while
twenty in every hundred possess blue eyes,
and the remaining five eyes are of light gray
or hazel Black eyes, however, are less com
mon than the majority OF observers imagine,
ana 1T is not often that one encounters pair
OF orbs that are absolutely black in all lights.
Fifteen per hundred will probably cover the
proportion, according to the authority Just
quoted, and at least ten of these may be
relegated to the category of the small, heavy
organ, as metallic in its luster as a globe OF
pennsylvania coal, but with dash of cum
ming IN Its depths sometimes that tends very
decidedly to strengthen ones belief in Oar
wlnlsm. There is a small black eye with a
reddish luster behind it. as if smouldering
empers hlckered Tor moment and then sub
slded, which must not be confounded with
the preceding. The category is rare even in
tnls CITY OF mingled types, and as a rule the
| owner is person not to be trihed with. Two
notable types of black eyes remain to be men
TONED The first is large, well opened, full of
lambert light, limpid, laughing. 1t dances
with mlrth, moistens with sympathy; is ca
pable of carrying on long conversation
with all its shades and subtleties without the
least assistance from the lips, and when
shaded with the long, dark lashes that usu-
ally accompany it its gances are SO mag
neuc and irresistible as to make one thank
heaven Tor its rarity. The next cate
CORY is large, long cut, half-opened,
liquid, sad slumberous, and solemn~thes
true eye, capable of such reveries
OF mysticism, such fanatic fires, as colder.
Gothlc natures can never understand. Trag-
edy turks in such orbs as these, and happily
Tor our stald social countenances they are
not more than one in a hundred as compared
with the mass. The variety of expression
OF which the eye is capable has been the
pons asinorum of the second-rate novelist
ever since fiction was invented Even in the
| old Greek days the authors of the MiIesian
tales, OF whose versfication Bulver made
such bungle were troubled to find descrip-
tive epithets. Homer could only describe
the royal orbs OF Juno by using the epithet
oil oX-eyed; the goddess had bovine eyes,
with the large motion and liquid pupil. But
what range of adjectives second-class fiction
has discovered-the second-cla fiction of
the English language in particular Eyes
sparkle, flash, burn, blaze tame yearT,
languish, threaten, darkle, lighten they
| are naughty, laughing, limpid, liquid,
sad slumberous, solemn, spiritual,
dreamy, shadowy velvety, and so
L
markable how writers of the first order de-
spise and discard this jargon. Dickens prob
| bly, appreciated the finest shades of differ
ence between eyes, but he wasted no adjec-
| tives, and when he wished to describe, as he
occasionally did, he always employed some
distinctive mode. He had observed the vim
dctive flicker the spot of red light that APP
pears in the eyes OF angry persons some
times and is due to the fact that the pupil
dilates and the rays of light meet and form
blazing point just behind the crystalline
lens. When such persons are excited vision
grows indistinct and hazy; there is temper
airy astigmatism. Mr.. Obenrezer had the
faculty OF drawing a vail over his eyes when
he meditated evil. That is, he had acquired
control over the muscles of the iris, and
could contract the pupil until the window
OF the soul was closed.
Our English oculist's attention was ar
rested by the relatively large proportion of
gray eyes in the United States, although it
was what he half expected to see as a conse-
quence of the admixture of races. And this
proportion he finds to be pretty evenly d.
vided between the blue gray and the orange
gray. OF course, in speaking of beautiful
eyes the great mass of common orbs must be
disregarded They answer very well, no
doubt, as things to see with, and thus serve
purpose but, according to our English au-
thority, not more than one pair of eyes in
fifty in England and not more than one pair
considered at all in a dissertation on the sub
ject. Among the remarkable types of beauty
that he saw here he mentioned a woman with
large, dark Eastern eyes complexion as
white and cold as ivory, and abundant masses
OF faxen hair turbaning superb Greek head
and Greek features.
In physical structure the American eye is
rather less spherical than the European, the
| antero-pos terior diameter exceeding the lat
eral measurement very considerably on the
average. The frontal surface of such an eve
| is paratively small, and, as a rule, this
variation in the two diameters pretty accu-
| rately gauges advance in culture and physi-
cal type. The African races possess nearly
globular eyes, and the Asiatic shares this
popularity with the Ethiop. Hence the
eyes of the more cultivated races appear
smaller and less striking in their beauty
than those that Mohammed put beneath the
brows of his houris. AS intellectual culture
advances, gazelle-eye1 sirens and ox-eyed
Junos vanish from humanity, and if Ameri-
cans, as a rule, have smaller eyes than the
European races, at least they may extract
compliment from the fact for as taste in
creases in the delicacy of its perceptions
| beauty is discovered not to consist in the
large and striking but in the finely nodded.
1t was Mr. Beresford Hope who described
Spanish beauty as a confused mixture of
hair, complexion, and eyes whose recollec-
ton follows you like a ghost Happily such
orbs are fast disappearing with the progress
of intellectual culture