New Britain herald., 1929-01-18
5 Handsome Harru
Looks Oper Mutter---HOu They Click!

@F all the senses given to human
 kind. sight is tho most sen.
 sitive, the most decisive and the most precarious.
 Since physical attraction is the chief urge in the mating of the sexes. and therefore chief element in bringing about our very lives (and nothing in life ii more important than life, itself, 10 matter what the poetic scribblers may tell you'll. and since looks are the primal and preponderant factor in nat ural selection. we are in truth largely the creatures of a glance from an eye and what that eye saw.
 This is. indeed. . pity. For physiog- nomy is . joke. Well-turned noses. small and shapely ears, inviting mouths, attractive contours of face. all arc congenital chemical accidents. There is no such thing as set of flea. lures reflecting character. A tall man looks manlier than little fellow. but 1t doesn't at all follow that he is A hard-faced girl may be pudding hearted angel. We all know that And yet
 What man falls in love with girl that doesn't appeal to his sense of beauty! What girl feels cardiac pal pitation at the discovery that fat. bald, squidy-nosed man Is kind-or virtuous-or even intelligent? Men follow the neat ankle, the feminine charms; girls weaken for the collar-ad heroes, sigh over the nincompoop matinee and film idols, and dream of . tall, broad-shouldered. square chinned Ajax-and she'll take . chance on what's inside her big boy doll Later she often wishes she hadn't. But primary impulse is eternal. and experience, logic, the great flaming light of truth. can't civilize 1t out of us children of Adam and Eve. the only couple in history that didn't click first via the ris-at least on one side.
 When . rich old freak lands a beau. tiful young girl, he buys her because she feeds his eye and she lets herself be bought because the price Is high enough to blind her. No two people ever married one another, mutually. for position. of their own free will- always ono of them had the physical appeal, the other some powerful per- suader to offset the lack of it. Pretty girls hook millionaires, nabobs, gen. fuses; handsome men thrill and cap- ture whom they want, while less sight, ly competitors, irrespective of any possession except almighty dough or lofty station, can pack their futile brains, their souls and their spirits in mothballs.
 Not only in the contacts of opposite sexes does this obtain. Men-in busi- ness, in politics, in every social and commercial and other walk, give preference to good-lookine men. They admire "a good appearance"-they place value on what they call "clean. cut" men-and that means IS to form and features. Lucky, indeed, is he and she, born on . Monday-for Mondays child is fair of face
 Take, now. the case of Harry Frall:
 From earliest childhood he had been indulged, petted. pampered and prefer red because he was unusually good. looking. Teachers, strangers, girls. other boy-all gave him the inside run as though he had been anointed by some divine hand with some gift from above as though he were a Shelley. or . Napoleon, or an Edison, or a Hoover instead of being . commonplace. con- ceited, spoiled, lazy loafer who early recognized that for him were not most of the hardships and griefs to which the rest of us are born.
 His escapades with young women soon made him notorious after he grew to adolescence. His trespasses were forgiven him-hs was so handsomel He tried job after job. He got them moro easily than anyone else and was fired with more reluctance than any. one else after he had proven and re- proven that he had no personality. efficiency. fidelity or dependability. Yet he lived along. and he was loved and he was pursued and he was pitied.
 Lenore Umley, of whom Handsome Harry had never even heard, wasn't bad locker, herself. And they were destined to meet.
 Lenore had breeding. which Harry didn't. Her father was a high public official. . widower. who had lived a useful and important life, and had reached that sappy age when he was receptive to pretty girls And no one could gainsay that Maybelle Strahn was pretty.