St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-01-02
PUNISHMENT FOR BEAUTY.
1t Falls Heavily in the Dark Days
OF Old Age.

Harpers Bazaar.
The woman who is pretty is far too
liable to think that that is enough; she
will conquer her kingdom 10y means of
it, 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; 1t is far off. 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 always the means
to make the repairs of beauty, and
sufficient unto the day is the evil there
of. 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 Tor
the impending fate which IS sure to
come to her If she live long enough; she
relies Oh her fair face, her bushes, her
dimples. her radiance, her smiles, her
chances, her sweetness. TO please. to
attract, to marry, to marry well, Is the
mark she has set before her; and it
virtues for that; the sterner virtues are
not greatly called into account in this
quest, have little opportunity of assert
ing themselves or even Of being missed.
Nor is great intellectual cultivation
in the scheme Of our pretty WOmaM's
life; according to her plan OF action 1t
is entirely unnecessary. Who cares for
SyllOgiSmS, lectures, Instructions, she
uncOnSciOuSly 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 fallen 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
facid muscles, when there will he fine
spider-web lines about the eyes, when
there will be hollows in the cheeks,
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
he vacuous face only "that divine mile
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 i'll the
dark together then, the girl that was
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-heartedneS 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 them all with
which she can have filled her intellect
and fed her soul, all that wit and virtue
and breeding can have given her, in
order to retain anything of that king
dom to which in the early days she felt
herself born by right divine.