River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1891-01-22
PRETTY WOMEN.
They do Not Look Forward to the Tim
when Their beauty Shall Fade.

They do Not Look Forward to the Time
when Their beauty Shall Fade.
The woman who is pretty is far too
liable to think that that is enough; she
will conquer her kingdom by means of
il: and when the day of reckoning, the
day of fading comes, the kingdom will
be already hers by right of possession.
Indeed she does not consider the day of
fading; it is something as difficult for
her to realize as death itself is to the
young; il is far of, vague, all but inn
possible; how is she ever going to look
other than she does now and still be
herself? And at any rate there are al
ways the means 10 make the repairs of
beauty, aud sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof And SO, in an average
of more than half the instances. she goes
dancing off about her pleasure like fly
in the sun. as full of the present, as
careless of the future; she makes no
preparation for the impending fate
which is sure 20 come If she live long
enough; She relies on her fair face, her
bushes, her dimples. her radiance, her
smiles. her Chances, her sweetness. To
please, 20 attract, to marry, to marry
well. is the mark she has set before her;
and il does not need cultivation of the
sterner virtues for that: the sterner Writ
ues are not greatly called into account
in this quest, have little opportunity Of
asserting themselves or even of being
missed.
Nor is great intellectual cultivation in
the scheme of our pretty womans life;
according TO her plan of action it is en-
tirely unnecessary. Who cares for syl
logisms. lectures. instructions. she UNI
consciously argues from rosy lips? Who
will stop to ask if the bright eyes have
dulled themselves over dry pages of
scholastic lore. Let who will be learned,
it is enough for her TO be gay and happy.
What, then. has our pretty creature
left for the dim passages of middle age,
when beauty has len away. but there
still is left the desire TO hold captive
what once beauty gained? The time is
coming when there will be deep cres-
cents round the mouth whose lovely
curves have been dragged down by
fiaccid muscles. when there will be fine
spider-web lines about the eyes. when
there will be hollows in the checks,
when the red and white of the skin will
have become blurred and notified. or
overlaid with yellow sallowness, when
perhaps there will be present in the
vacuous face only that divine smile
which has lost the two front teeth?'
Let the pretty girl remember that in
the darkness of that middle passage
the beauty that she had before
she entered it viii not signify; all
faces are in the dark together then,
the girl that vas plain with the girl
that was beautiful; the wreck of beauty
signifies then no more than the wreck
of what never was beauty 1t is the
sweet voice, the kindly manner, the
burden of what is said, the tender
heartedness of what is done, that tells
with any effect then. 1t will not be
long before she arrives at this time,
which, in comparison to the blaze of
youth, neighbors close on the dark; and
she will need then all with which she
can have filled her intellect and fed her
soul, all that wit and virtue and breed
ing can have given her, in order to re-
tain any Ling of that kingdom to which
in the early days she felt herself born
by right divine.-iiarper's Bazaar.