The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-10-02

It is as we'll to confess that when went to question Edwin Rowland Blashfie1d on the vital question of fena- mine loveliness did not expect to gain any practical information. To be sure. there are few, if any. in America who are so great authorities upon this sub feet as Is MT. Blashheld. Few artists in our land have studied the real and created the ideal woman through so long and broad a range of years and experience as he has.
 But before my mind rose the vision of his wonderful wall flowers" the women in his artist dreams, the ideal figures that represent the Human Un- derstanding and Religion and Philoso- phy and Emancipation; .the goddess figures that surmount all other figures fin the Congressional Library and range around the collar of the great gold dome.
 'Tt's all nonsense to ask him about human woman's faults and beauties, thought in an advance state or diS- cotraRement. He will talk in terms of the ideal and the classic. and there won't be a word of help or encourage ment or warning for the scrawny and tne freckled and the prematurely gray.
 Then Mir. Blashheld entered his drawing room, where I was waiting. and the very handshake ot him and his good, wholesome smile showed him ex-President of the Society of Ameri- can Artists, able to come down from the region of the great gold dome. with its galaxy of stately beauties, and talk of things that concern the every dav people who walk about below.
 ''You want to know what are the most common faults that l hnd In aearching the ideal model?" he said. "Women of this day lack the powerful arm of the classical beauty, for one thing. For another. there is a tenden- cy among legs to lack Che proper length as judged by the measure or the trunk. In other words, women ore inclined to be short-legged.
 There. in that one paragraph, MT. Blashfeld had furnished enough food for thought to keep all the gymnasium instructors in the country working over hours to digest 1t.
 First, our arms are lacking; second our legs are short. What are we to do about the matter-the two mattersf
 'erake the Dianas of early artists, ne went on. Their arms are most beau tiful and powerful at the same time. If is the rarest thing in the world Co And any such arm nowadays. Many women lack strength of arm. The limb Is evidently weak, undeveloped, Those who have good muscular devcl- onrnent in this portion usually lack roundness and beauty in it. The mus cIes stand out in a masculine way, and there is none of the graeetul roundness that is so much desired by the artist:
 'Is this especially an American taiI- ing?' I asked him.
 NO. I can't say that 1t Is. ind 1t common in many models and my
 all for | work in New York. and that Is a yvonderfullv cosmopolitan city. Arms are too slight in the great majority of cases" tering of this natter
 "A great deal of hope. It is a splendid thing, this physical culture that is becoming universal among our women. America ought one day to produce a race of women with the forms of Diana and Hebe. The ath- letic training that began as fad and ia now developing into almost a relig- io,, will bring about wonderwul results in the line of national beauty. If only the heads don't keep on growing larger That ia one of an artists greatest trials You know the classical stan dard calls for a small head Tor woman and the modern head is distressingly large. as judged by Venus and other beauties of old. don't know what is to be done about 1t, for the modern hrains must have some place to stow themselves away. l suppose. Perhaps we shall come to form an entirely new standard of beauty in this respect"
 It looks as if his final suggestion offers the only way out of the dIfh- cultv. does 1t not? Physical culture can do almost everything toward the building up of bodies. but 1t Is at loss when it comes to the building down of heads; especially with all the col their level best to make the matter worse. Evidently there is nothing for 1t but to make ourselves contented with our brains. even if they have cost us our heads.
 what about the American woman's hips?'' asked. Do you cansider that they arc too large as a general thinR7