Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look intelligent--brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee, and we like it.
I hope I shall not offend that most talented of French actresses, Madame Rejane, or her admirers, by saying that Athens would have refused to look at her; but the Parisians, the descendants and successors of the Attic Greeks, love her, with her big mouth, square when it laughs, and her turned-up nose. To them she is the embodiment of liveliness, wit, and gaiety.
A small, piquante brunette, with small, keen eyes, thick lips, thin, alert; a blonde dishevelled, like a spaniel, with glorious form, will excite admiration--both are beautiful.
But the other beauty, the one that can be obtained of art, is at the disposal of every woman. In fact, the woman who knows how to put on her dress and do her hair well, who has on a becoming hat, pretty shoes, and neat gloves, who has good taste in furniture, who speaks pleasantly, smiles cheerfully and good-naturedly, who has elegance of manners and a pretty voice, who has a bright conversation--that woman will be declared pretty, even beautiful, far more readily and unanimously than the real beauty, one who fails to pay attention to her dress and manners, who has no consciousness of her power and her value, and who constantly forgets that good surroundings are to her what a handsome frame is to a picture.
Practically every woman can obtain this result, and that is why I have entitled this chapter 'Women may All be Beautiful.'
Of all the pitiful sights, of all the pathetic figures in the world, there is none to compare to women at sea.
Is it possible that these dejected, abject-looking bundles of misery only yesterday were the bright, proud, elegant, queenly fashion-plates whom I saw on Fifth Avenue? _Quantum mutatæ ab illis!_ What a metamorphosis!
Poor things! Even the most terrible home ruler is satisfied with the lower berth, and gives her husband a chance to look down upon her. She is meek and grateful, she is submissive, and her imploring eyes beg the most hen-pecked husband not to take advantage of his temporary superiority.