Birmingham age-herald., 1894-10-18
ifHE VALUE OF BEAUTY.
It Is Leesened by the Growing Respect for Education.
Plain Girls Are Plentiful But When Thes Are Clever Their Plainness Is Not So Much Noticed by IntellI-
 gent Men.

Ugly girlsl Happily they are rare.
 Plain girls they are in plenty; and per-
 haps, on the whole, it is better for the
 peace of mankind that they should be
 in the majority. But absolute downright
 ugliness is seldom met with. Irregu- 1arity, insignifcance or want of har-
 mony in the features is not sufficient
 to constitute ugliness. A high fore
 head is nowadays universally consid-
 cred misfortune, says the New York
 Advertiser. Our great-grandfathers
 considered it quite the reverse. A
 pasty complexion is, no doubt, a calam-
 ity; so is the long upper lip, and so is
 the large chin. But girls face may
 have one of these characteristics, it
 may even possess them all, without be-
 ing positively ugly. An intelligent
 mind and a gentle spirit may do won
 ders in transforming a pale face, and
 making it, if not beautiful, at least att
 tractive. And the proof of this is the
 often-noted fact that many plain, and
 even ugly, girls are led to the altar,
 while their handsomer sisters inspire admiration without winning love. 1t
 is when plain or badly-formed features are the home of stupidity, when they are unillumined by spark of sense or a ray of generous feeling, that they form truly ugly. face. Such faces there are, and there are also faces cast by nature in so bad mold that .noth- ing will render them attractive, any more than deformed figure can be rendered comely; but such ugliness is almost as rare as beauty itself.
 curious change has come over the minds of men in respect to the beauty of women; they seem to value it less than they did; and this in spite of the fact that beauty has of late years be- come rarer than ever. In the last cen tury men would imperil their lives cheerfully for the mere privilege of be- ing considered beauty's champion. Men do not toast reigning belles now; there are no reigning bellies to toast. Where are the love songs? Herrick and Burns and Heine have no modern compeers. The chief reason for the decline in the value men put upon beauty is, no doubt, the superior edu- cation of the nineteenth century girl. Men have, by slow degrees, learned to take pleasure in the society of women who are mentally their equals, whether they are fair to look upon or not. Many clever women really do not seem to care two straws whether they are good looking or ill looking. Their lives do not tend even to the preservation of such traces of comeli- ness as nature may have bestowed upon them. They study, and turn heavy eyed and sallow; or they devote themselves to some trade and profes- sion and acquire the strenuous thin Tipped visage by which the worker is known; or perhaps they adopt the physical as well as mental develop ment, and lose all grace of form by vii olent exercise, and all delicacy of com plexion by exposure to the weather. 1n word, they become ugly girls, and they do not mind it.
 We do not know that the plain girl, who can carry off her ugliness under rattle of words and constant flow of good spirits, is very much to be pitied. But there are some ill-favored damsels who really deserve commiseration- those, namely, who are too painfully aware of their deficiency in good looks to forget it for moment. Strange as the observation may sound to male ears, it is yet fact that there are plenty of girls who, so far from feeling vain of their personal appearance, would not complain if fashion ordained that they should veil their faces after the manner of the east. Very likely 1,o,, of guarding them against feelings of vanity, have spoken so often in dis paraging wayof their looks that they have actually conceived dislike for their own personal appearance. They are perfectly convinced that they pre- sent an unpleasing, if not disagreeable, spectacle to their fellow-men; their highest ambition is to render them selves as little repulsive as possible. 1t is not an easy thing to imagine what agonies shy and ugly girl may have to endure, or how sweet to her are the marks of respect and courtesies which are too often monopolized by the pret- ty girls of party. It is undoubtedly one of the distinctive marks of the gentleman that he pays 8 woman all the little attentions that the usages of society require of him, whether she is young or old, handsome or ugly.
 Men often excuse themselves for at tendance on plain young women on the ground that they are not only ill., looking, but ill-tempered. There is too much truth in the charge. But the ugly girl is not without excuse. The consciousness that no man or-woman cares to look at her face second time, joined to the sensitiveness she has ac- quired, is apt to sour her temper; and this, in it's turn, tends to increase her .-