Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1890-02-01

ness uses to catch the eye and draw the lover.
There is sort of sacredness about beauty to
most women that lets one see how it once was
delhed in the shape of Cytheraa and Astarte. and
how the women who served it could become Dos
sessed of such jealous fury against those who yio
lated the rites of its worship. Thus, wherever
such beauty exists, none are so ready to confess
its power, the power not only of the velvet dam
ask, the oval line, the nesting dimple the shifting
dazzle of the cheek,
Where blushing to the laughter gives more grace.
And laughter to the blushing
of the dark softness Of the lone-frinoed ewes Of
the sweetness of the ps the radiance of the smile
the purity of the brow, of all the flowing grace of
form and movement but of the soul, too that
looks and speaks and is apparent through it all.
No subtle backblting, no captous hints or SLAM
derous slurs will ever follow her whose subjects
are other women, and who, far from envyine are
rather ready to give service. None acknowledge
this possession of actual beauty by another so
freely as plain women do; they feel what delight
it must be to give pleasure to others by eyerv
movement, every glance, by simply being. aHow
hard it must have been for her," said Maria
Mitchell, in speaking of the death of lovely girl
Ito leave so beautiful body"
Yet whenever one who is in person lovely be-
You'd words has not also some due share of this
beauty of the soul that appeals to the soul that
calls out the service of her sex, her beauty will be
bane rather than blessing, for she will use it to
ignoble ends; they who value it too highly will
stimulate her less lofty nature by means Of it.
'First he did praise my beauty, then my speech''
and it will force into life the seeds of the small
sins and sorrows that might have slept forever:
with all her own fairness she will be Jealous con-
corning the fairness of others; her vanity will
choke every good growth in her being it will be-
come kind of cruelty, and she will develop into
a counterpart of La Belle Dame sans Merci.
Yet they are few who have other than a sweet,
innocent joy in their beauty when aware of it, the
JOY OF being beloved the joy Of giving JOY; not
that of enrapturng lovers heart since the
plainest girl that breathes may do that, but the
joy of giving delight as something more than
lovely picture might; and when they miss love or
lose it, their beauty is as vaueless to them as a
furnished leaf.
"This poor little rose of girl" says Mary
Wilkins, in one of her exquisite and inimitabe
stories, latter her lover had sighted her still once
MORE might as well have been burdock-weed or
ragged robin for all the satisfaction she took in
. JULY d IOSe.
Doubtless even the outer beauty brings to many
gladness and possibilities that might not be known
without it, the height of empire here, the intox-
cation of applauding multtudes there; and where
one comes to grief upon the larger life by reason
of it, numbers sway scepter that falls from their
hands only when death loosens the grasp.
Beauty, then, if rightly accepted and worn,
must be regarded always as blessing, but it is
an enduring blessing only when it is the expression
of an inner and unfading beauty. In itself it is
a garment that one day falls in rags and perhaps
they who have had it and who see it drop away
from them under the fretting of the rapacious
years, suffer keener pangs than would be possible
to them if they had never had it to lose, unless its
inner self be still there shining through the loss,
informing and dominating all there is left, coming
one day perchance to dust and ashes with the rest,
but dust and ashes shall OutWeph the stars AFT last