The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-02-10
SHORT-LIyED EAUTY

A Word to Pretty Women That MAJ. ~
Useful In the Sore and Yellow.
The w~omanswho is pretty is far too Liable
to think that that is enough; she will con-
quer her kingdom by means of it; and when
the day of reckoning, the day Of fading
comes, the kingdom will be already hers by
right of possession, says Harpers' Bazaar.
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; it
is far of, vague, all but impossible; how is
she ever going to look other thar she does
now, and still be herself? And at any rate
there are always the means to make the
repairs of beauty, and sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof. And 30, in an aver
age of more than half the instances,
she goes dancing off about her pleasure like
a fly in the sun, as full of the present, as
careless of the future; she makes no prepar-
alton for the impending fate which is sure
to come to her if she live long enough; she
relies on her fair face, her bushes, her dim
Piles, her radiance, her smiles, her chances,
marry. to marry we'll, is the mark she has
set before her, and it does not need cultiva-
ton of the sterner virtues for that. Tho
sterner virtues are not greatly called into
account in this quest, have little opportu-
nifty of asserting themselves or even OF
being missed.
Nor is great intellectual cultivation in the
scheme of our pretty woman's life: accord
ing to her plan of action il is entirely I'M
necessary. Who cares for ~syllogisms, lect-
ures, instructions, she u%nconsciously 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
laa rpp1 IL ID pYnnuh for hnp f, ho a n yY1,a
What, then, has our pretty creature left
for the dim passages of middle age, whom
beauty has fallen away, but there
still is left the desire to hold cap
tive what once beauty gained? The
crescents round the mouth who's
lovely curves have been dragged down
by iaccid muscles, when there will be fine
splder-web lines about the eyes, when there
will be hoilows in the cheeks. when the red
and white of the skin will have become
blurred and notified or oyeriaid with yellow
saliowness, when perhaps there will be pres
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 will not
signify: all faces are in the dark together
then, the girl that was pale with the girl
that WAS beautiful; the wreck of beauty
signifies then no more than the wreck OF
what never was beauty. It is the sweet
voice. the kindly manner, the burden of what
is said, the tender heartedness of what ia
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, neighbois 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 n virtue and breeding can have given
her, in order to retain anything of that
kingdom to which in the early DAYS she
felt herself born by right divine.