Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1904-09-29
PASSING or THE BLONDES.
Light-Haired People Are Growing
F Scarcer with Each Succeed
ing Generation. .,

1.-THE blondes are disappearing hui
man type" says Anthropologist Otis T.
Mason, of the Smithsonian Institution,
according to a recent report. 'They are
going fast. Blonde women are becom-
ing scarcer every year, and to-day there
are not nearly so many fair haired and
blue-eyed beauties as there were SO years
ago. In each successive generation
there are fewer of them than in the
last. Already such thing as a real
blonde, purely such, is so rarely seen in
this country as to excite remark, and
golden tresses are so infrequent that
veritable ones are usually suspected to
be dyed. In short, it has become evil
dent that before long this type of fem
mime loneliness will have practically
vanished from the earth.
"You may Judge how rapidly the
blondes are going when you consider the
fact that wherever brunette man mar
ries a blonde woman, or vice versa, 66
per cent. of the children born have dark
hair and eyes At that rate not many
centuries will be required to wipe out
the fair type. altogether ! If you ask
how this matter has been determined
with such accuracy,sI will reply that it
has been by including statistical OBJ
servations on the point in the censuses
of nations.
observations made in this way, COW
ering millions of persons of both sexes,
have resulted in the discovery that dark
people bring more children into the
world than fair people, Furthermore,
they have greater muscular vigor, and
they live longer. Thus in every point
which has to do with the perpetuation of
species they are superior The rule in
nature seems to be that pigment, which
gives color to the hair and eyes, is an
indication of force"
Does the passing of the blonde mean the
disappearance of the most beautiful hui
man type? ,,
1t is question which, of course, is
open to dispute, and dark women espe-
cially will be disposed to pooh pooh the
idea. Nobody can decide. Yet, it is
undeniably fact that artists, who are
supposed to be expert judges CT beauty,
usually select the blonde type when they
wish to represent the highest feminine
ideal. If proof of this be wanted, look
at the finest works of art in which an
gels are depicted. Nearly always they
have blue eyes and golden hair.
Go away back to Fra Angelica, who
was the first great painter of angels. His
angels are blondes. That man, who,
though only humble priest, refused a
bishopric, had a genius for the repre-
sentation of things divine, and many a
church did he adorn with paintings OF
Scriptural scenes, in which the winged
messengers figured prominently.
Angels represent the highest concep-
lions of physical beauty-the apotheosis
of bodily perfection, as viewed by the
artists who have painted them. Fra An
gelico was first to depict angels Of the
gentler sex, and in his day was severely
criticised for it by churchmen, who
claimed that the idea was wholly i'm
proper innovation, Angels up to that
time had always been of the male sex.
the notion Of picturing fem
mime loneliness in this guise was taken
up by later painters, and modern angels
in art are nearly all women, the ex-
ceptions being archangels, who, when
they appear on canvas are necessarily
men-as, for example, Gabriel and
Raphael. Among all the celestial hosts
only the seven archangels are known as
individuals and by name.
In one respect the young women of
to-day are approaching the angelic
standard-namely, in stature. Angels,
as shown in pictures, are always tall.
That women generally are admirers
of the blonde type, as opposed to the
brunette, is sufficiently proved by the
frequency with which they bleach their
hair, by the aid of peroxide of hydro
gen, and other chemical preparations.
The fact that most people have fair hair
in early youth would seem, by the way,
to indicate that our ancestors were a
fair-haired race-a conclusion which,
indeed, is borne out by history, though
the so-called Anglo-Saxons are sprung
from such mixture of racial stocks
that it is not easy to assign to them
a definite origin.
One of the most melancholy things
in the life of the average woman is
the gradual darkening of the hair,
which is liable to signify a loss of it's
beauty. The phenomenon is due to an
increasing supply of pigment, and
there is no known means whereby the
process can be arrested. Inasmuch as
the coloring matter is the same as that
which gives it's tint to the complex
ion, woman may consider herself for
tunate that the skin does not manifest
the same tendency; else she might
start in life as white and find herself
a mulatto in her old age.
Recreation-Mad Generation.
We live-tO sum up the situation