The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-12-04

comes about that many things which women admire do as much wrong to their beauty as to the purses of their husbands and fathers. What would you say of a young girl who expressed her thoughts in terms very choice in- deed, but taken word for word from phrase book2 What charm could you find in this borrowed language? The effect of toilets well designed in them selves, but seen again and again on all women indiscriminately, is precise ly the same.
 I cannot resist citing here a passage from Camille Lemonnier that harmo- nizes with my idea:
 Mature has given to the fingers of
 woman a charming art, which she knows by instinct and which is pecul- iarly her own, as silk to the worm and lacework to the swift and subtle spi- der. She is the poet the interpreter of her own grace and ingenuousness, the spinner of the mystery in which her wish to please arrays itself. All the talent she expends in her effort to equal
  the spirit and conception wrought out through a bit of stuff in her slkillful hands.
 "Well, I wish that this art were more honored than it is. As education should consist in thinking with ones mind, feeling with ones heart, expressing the little personalities of the inmost, invis- ible T'-which, on the contrary, are repressed, leyeled down, by conformi- ty-I would that the young girl in her novitiate of womanhood, the future mother, might early become the little exponent of this art of the toilet-her own dressmaker, in short-she who one day shall make the dresses of her chil- dren, but with the taste and the gift to improvise, to express herself in that masterpiece of feminine personalitr and skill, a gown. without which a wo- man is no more than bundle of rags"
 The dress you have made for your self is almost always the most becom- ing, and, however that may be, it is the one that pleases you most Wom- en of leisure too often forget this; working women also in city and coun- try alike. Since these last are cos tuned by dressmakers and milliners in very doubtful imitation of the mod ish world, grace has almost disappear ed from their dress. And has anything more surely the gift to please than the fresh apparltion of young working girl or daughter of the fields wearing the costume of her country and beau tiful from her simplicity alone?
 These same reflections might be ap- piled to the fashion of decorating and arranging our houses. If there are toi- lets which reveal an entire conception
 of life, hats that are poems, knots of
 ribbon that are veritable works of art,
 so there are interiors which after their
 manner speak to the mind. Why, un-
 der pretext of decorating our homes,
 do we destroy that personal character
 which always has such value? Why
 have our sleeping rooms conform to those of hotels, our reception rooms to
 waiting rooms, by making predomi- nant a uniform type of official beauty?
 What a pity to go through the houses of city. the cities of country, the countries of vast continent, and encounter everywhere certain forms Identical, inevitable, exasperating by their repetition! How aesthetics would gain by more simplicity! Instead of this luxury In job lots, all these deco ratlons, pretentious, but yapid from iteration, we should have an infinite variety; happy improvlsations would strike our eyes, the unexpected in thousand forms would rejoice our hearts. and we should rediscover the secret of impressing on drapery or a piece of furniture that stamp of hu- man personality which makes certain antiques priceless.
 Let us pass nt last to things simpler still; mean the little details of house. Keeping which many young people of /, our dny find so unpoetical. Their con tempt for material things, for the hum ble cares a house demands, arises from a confusion very common. but none the | less unfortunate, which comes from the belief that beauty and poetry are ! within some things. while others lack l them; that some occupations are dis ! and agreeable. such as cultl- vating letters, playing the harp, and | that others are menial and disagree able. like backing shoes sweeping and watching the pot boil. Childish error! Neither harp nor broom has anything to do with It. All depends on the hand in which they rest and the spirit that moves it. Poetry is not in things; 1t is In us. It must be impressed on ob- 5ects from without, as the sculptor im- | presses his dream on the marble. If | our life and our occupations remain | too often without charm in spite of any | outward distinction they may have it is because we have not known how to put | anything into them. The height of art | is to make the inert live and to tame | the savage. I would have our young girls apply themselves to the develop ment of the truly feminine art of gv- | ing a soul to things which have none. l The triumph of womans charm Is in that work. Only a woman knows how to i put into a home that indefinable some thing whose virtue has made the poet say, "The house top rejoices and is glad" They say there are no such things as fairies or that there arc fairies no longer, but they know not what they say. The original of the fairies sung by poets was found and is still among those amiable mortals who knead bread with energy, mend rents uytfh chaarf,,lnaoo ,,,,rsa tho ciol~ with