Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-04-21
"THE BEAUTIFUL HEROINE."
Unlike the Gay. Sparkling Soubrette,
She fs Growing Older.

Unlike the Gay. Sparkling SOubrette,
She In Growing Older.
'I have read lot of books in my time"
said a literary man, land l am glad to
observe that with each decade the young
and beautiful heroine Is slowly and surely
ageing and her beauty is fading.
TT makes a thinking man tremble to
contemplate this creatures personal APP
pearance at the end of the century. Thirty
years or ago, she was about fifteen
or Whereabouts, just out of short skirts,
but, of course, with all the graces, man
ners and accomplishments of woman of
twenty-five. The fact that her limited edu-
cation had been just completed didn't make
any difference.
She was oh, so beautiful. And she was
always willowy and slight and sylph-like
Often she had hectic flush and would
have sunk into an early decline if the dear,
kind hero hadn't philanthropically welded
her to save her from an untimely grave.
She chewed chalk at boarding school and
eat pickles at home to keep her embon-
point down.
She was so uusophisticated and inno-
cent that it makes you wonder whether she
really knew enough to come down to din
ner when the bell rang. And her troubles !!
They were indeed heartrending, so good
and ingenious was she. In the slang of the
present day she a dead easy mark for
the whole push in the book, from the rich
uncle to the bad girl at school.
But in the last chapter she always re-
covered her feet struck her gait and came
up the post winner from her rival in a
strong finish, raking in the stakes, baro-
net (never below baronet in the three
volume English novel;. an earl, or duke,
or any old title the author was kind enough
to give her a reward for patient waiting
and chalk chewing.
About twenty years ago her stock went
up several points and she became a weight
for age FLY, owning up to at least seven
teen leafy springs The chalk chewing
habit fell into disfavor But she was still
insufficiently fed beautiful darling of old,
who brought tears to your eyes in her eff
forts not to let the hero know how much
she loved him, and how dead scared she
was lest he'd never find out how much she
cared for Reginald, old boy. Did you ever
realize what horrible thing il would be
If Reginald should forget to declare in the
last chapter the tender passion which has
racked his hollow chest through all the
preceding pages? Wouldn't that be liter
airy catastrophe, and wouldn't it be pretty
hard on the dear girls nerves? In the old
novels, however Reginald always came up
to the scratch all right. like a little man.
And so. as the years have chased along
with old Father Time the sweet creature
age has gradually elongated like the purse
of one who is throwing his dough to the
winds. BY gentle inclines she managed by
desperate efforts to reach eighteen. where
she lowered lovingly and reluctantly to
leave this most fascinating age. Then she
crawled to nineteen. This is a good age
for heroines of today to make their initial
bow to an expectant and resistless reading
public. You see, twenty Is an age that
first awakens in the feminine breast a
feeling that the time has been reached
when, even II she is a heroine in a book, it
is a good thing to begin to hedge on the
age question and appear deaf and dumb
when the subject is brought up for discus
sion at table.
Few authors have the temerity to trot
her out at twenty or over except the most
reckless. and these have qualms of con-
science at their strength of mind.
She needn't be beautiful now. There
are other charms than facial beauty, and
they are going in for beauty of the soul
and other adOrnments, such as character
or mind. OF course, men don't pick a
woman out for a wife for her beauty. Oh,
no, It's soul with these authors That's
all they know about us.
However, if the popular heroine keeps
on ageing, in fifty years from now she will
be old maid and then the hero won't
have her, even in the last chapter"
The Germanic, very well-known steamer
Of the White Star Line, has made more
than 500 trips across the Atlantic. She and
her sister ship, the Britannia. built in 1874
have each Travelled considerably over two
millions of miles, distance equal to eight
and three-quarter times that between the
earth and the moon. Between them they
have carried considerably over 100 600 sa-