The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-05-18
THE BEAUTY OF THE ARM.
WOMEN WHO EXHIBIT GRACIOUS
CURVES AND SOFT DIMPLES.

prised People With Her Wedding.
Fortunes in Teacups-where One
Novelist Gets Her Material = Odd
Fancies in Gems.
(Copy1ght.l
NEW YORK. May 1--WE are going to
have an era of arms. In o general way
arms are things we have with us always,
but the chances are we shall see moro of
them The long glove has moderated its
ambition; il stops as soon as 1t has turned
the corner of the elbow. One woman in
twenty has prettily modelled elbow, and
she. you may be sure, does not cover its
dimples with either glove or sleeve. Glove
etiquette seems to be a little more liberal
than it was before we wore the Greek gown.
There are daring spirits who regard its
classic folds as warrant for barring the arm
from fingertip TO shoulder. There are even
those who maintain that by wearing the
Recamier dress the same dispensation from
gloves may be obtained. Ella Wheeler
Wilcox, for example. when she puts on a
short-waisted white silk, is never shy about
exposing her long, rounded arms.
The smoke of the fight about the decol-
lete bodice has never enveloped the arm.
Annie Jenness Miller says that if a woman's
arm is pretty she should give Its shapeluesS
frankly to the world; if it is not pretty she
should study sleeves. The ideal arm has
beauty of a wholesome, almost of a pastoral
order; it bears showing. 1t is clear-skinned
aud rounded and there is gracious dimple
Just at the side of the elbow. The skin is
soft, but the flesh is firm. Beneath its
smooth contour it is instinct with the
strength that supports a tired child. 1t is
IL full 4cc
the seraglio rather than the green fields.
Women who know anything about arms
have thrown their bracelets away. 1t is
mistaken policy TO call attention to poor
arm and good one is never so beautiful as
when naked. One often sees the value of a
wrist absolutely destroyed by bangle.
Gloved or ungloved, sleeved or unsleeved,
braceleted or without jewels, the arm
grows in importance every day. Genevieve
Stebbins Thompson and Nine. Albert and
Henrietta Crane Russell and Mabel Jenness
and the rest of the aesthetics aud physical
culturists and Delsarteans have been teach
ing us all winter to pose, and the pity is we
begin to "make" our arms before we have
taken our degrees. The results are COM
monty ridiculous or harassing.
The arms of the woman who is not natu-
rally graceful always looks stiff and harsh
as they lie in her lap motIonless. If she is
not bitten with any Of the artistic fads she
makes an awkward hoop of them with fin
gers interlaced. If she has been doing a
little amateurish studying of classical col
lections she extends them or let's them hang
at full length unflexed in hard, straight
lines. The first piece of advice which a
well-wisher would give such woman
would be that she allow both arms to fall in
free, easy positions, slightly relaxed at the
elbows or with the hand dropping a little at
wrist, but that she should not allow her
l.fA 81 x-rfer
ing One ought usually TO take a somewhat
different position from the other, else you
overdo the bi-lateral symmetry and look
like jointed doll.
But it is when a woman moves that real
difficulties arise Many a girl who makes
capital out of handsome arms when she
throws them into relief ON the tennis ground
flaps like a seal if she shakes hands in a
drawing room. The difference is partly in
the environment; partly, sometimes In the
gown. There's no getting graceful motion
if your dress has French fit at the shoulder
seams. Most women think there is fine
reserve in restrained gesticulation, and it is
true that the woman does not exist
who can attitudiniZe in private life
without considerable danger of
making herself ridiculous. 1t is COM
monty assumed that the effect has
been calculated if pretty girl in
dulges in a movement as charming and
natural as that of raising her arms to adjust
her hair. But because a woman'S arms
must be kept well within the picture and
backed against the person, it does not
follow that she should move her arms, as
most women do, only from the elbows No
gesture could be worse possibly. 1t ex-
presses the little, the petty, the ungracious.
the over-anxious to enter the camp of the
400. 1t stamps a woman at once as nervous
and awkward, an overgrown schoolgirl.
4 .k.&
shoulder. In this way only can one get
curve or swing. Elbow motion is mechan-
lcal, all angles.
lou can tell much about a woman by the
way in which she shakes hands. The pump
handle motion, fashionable this past winter
was distinctly vulgar almost as much So as
the present squaring of the shoulders, ex-
tension of the elbows and staggering
clutch of the pockets which is sold to one
girl in every four with her spring jacket
Many woman who is gracefully cordial
with an intimate falls back on marionette-
like wagging from the elbow if called upon
to say "How do you dos" to an important
person of whom she stands somewhat in
awe. The giving of the hand must be a
whole arm motion, but the arm should not
be extended at full length, except in impul-
sive welcome; it may be kept rather near
the body and the hand allowed to fall low.
The harp, the either, the violin are SO
many chances for arms. Ii a girl is round
limbed it is getting almost impossible for
her to look at the pictures of the Pompeian
pipe players and the Greek girls playing the
tuba without going straightway to join a
ladies' orchestra. Mrs. Ella Dietz Ciymer
owes much of her reputation as the beau
tifur' president of Sorosis to her use of her
arms. She never forces them. Ii she dis
poses herself statuesquely against the high
back of her carved chair she is content with
so much of picturequeness as is compatible
with the calm poise of a good presiding
officer. If occasion arises for her to throw
an active expression into her posture she
gets just the permissible effect, no more, no
less, out of her graceful arms. But no
woman off the stage has the actress's oppor-
tunity.
Lillian Russell has splendid, ripe, full
colored arms; little heavy perhaps, and
suggesting the Turkish bath rather than the
sunshine, but strong throughout and firm;
such arms as speak of the fullness of recog-
milton before the coming of the marks of
tunes invasion.
Julia Marlowe has 1.-THE, graceful young
arm; it reminds one of Margaret Mather's
before that young woman quarreled with
her manager and began to grow feshy. And
vet Miss Mather's arm was always too long.
Miss Marlowe's is exquisitely proportional
and clearly, daintily modelled. 1t is Diana
arm, or rather that of one of Diana's