The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-06-03
sERMoNETTE ON BEAUTY.
The Society Smile Leaves Lines in
the Face Tint Are Hard
to Eiface.

Our faces get just as tired as our
backs or our feet, and then. if we know
enough. we long for the soothing touch
of fingers trained to knead and pat and
stroke our muscles.
The sensation is delightful. Ten vel.
vety balls travelling around our chin,
under our eyes, across our foreheads,
and each ball carrying along cool lit
tie dab of something creamy and soft
and fragrant.
Many's the spell of cross-grainness l
have had chased off in this way. Social
indulgences must be paid for.
Weare obliged to grimace. Some peo-
pie call it Smiling" We expect our
smirks to bring lines.
| We look to the artful rubber to keep
facial muscles SO strengthened that
they will resist the strain to which they
are subjected.
We are also wise enough to learn a
few massage tricks as we'll.
And how careful we IRE to get to-
gether delicate lotions that will help
our ten fingers to do the work demand
ed of them.
Imagine how the face of woman
pledged to six euchres week and a
whist or two thrown in must need mas
sage. There is nothing on earth more
cruelty unkind to good looks than those
persistent efforts of ours to be agree
able. We cannot so into society with
sealed lips and expressions that are
funereal. We begin the great grimac-
ing act from the moment we give our
hostess our first handshake to the time
for the final adieu.
We can actually feel, if we have
grown sensitive upon the subject of
wrinkles, the lines coming about our
eyes, and around our mouth every time
we contract the muscles.
We may be ignorant of consequences.
If so we let threadlike weavcs appear,
and that cunning scamp Time - de-
lighted to be allowed his will, sees to it
that they become day by day deeper and
deeper.
And there arrives time when even
Venus mirror refuses to shelter de-
fects. Our eyes are still bright, our
color fine, our complexion free from
blGiulSAlCS, Dtll, ulitS. lew CION lCCl
or u network of wrinkles spoils every
thing.
1t is all folderol to tell woman of 30
that she may look as young as n girl of
is. If true to the trust nature has re-
! posed in her she has no need to envy
the bud If she has cared for each gift
with which she has been endowed, she
can afford to laugh at the pretensions of
youth with all its guacheries, all it's in
sipidities. If, however, she has been
negligent of the arts that bcautify, an
unbeliever in science as a cure-all for
our infections, she must simply bear her
punishment. She will be punished.
Retribution may loiter. 1t arrives, if
not promptly OH time, early enough to
torment, to harass, to reproach.
Life may not be such a picnic to any
one of us that we desire to cling to
youth. We may even long to end it.
We should without delay be coached re-
gartling the ironclad rule which prog
ress insists shall be learned, namely,
that we are expected to be beautiful,
wholesome, physically a delight and to
please others and not ourselves.
How are our faces scanned? We
should not hold the years we have lived
responsible, but the lives we have led.
Malice and snarling work havoc with
the fairest faces. Defy the laws of
common sense and hygiene and see
where we will bring up. Go on from
time to time, planning reforms without
carrying out single plan, and see how
we will come out. There is no dissipa-
ton, it matters not how small, that does
not leave it's impress. l have no pa
tience with a wheezy old age, with a
sallow-tinted, bloomless maturity. l
have no patience with shriveled,
parchment-like decay, with lean or u
fat old womanhoot. Grow old beauti-
fully. If we do not know how it can be
done we should lose no time in finding
out.-Dorothy Maddox, in Philadelphia
Inquirer.