Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1884 — Heavenly Blue. [ARTICLE]

Heavenly Blue.

All women and painters admire the color known as blue. And this general admiration cannot but provoke comment when it is realized that there is, with the except on of the skj, less of bine in nature than of any other color. It conveys to the mind but one idea, that of purity; and the value of the virtue seems to be shadowed forth in the color. Painters of all ages have delighted in robing loving Madonnas, pale saints, and angelic cherubs in various shades of this wonderful color. There are few blue flowers, and not many blue birds or fishes, while real blue eyes, supposed to be seen every day, are really anomalies in nature which, if possessed, it is not believed would be beautiful The Koman love for blue was such that it came to signify “beautiful,” and to impurple (for it was called purple or blue) meant to make beautiful. The early Britons evidently shared this taste in conjunction with the Romans, because they tattooed their bodies in blue, and were so proud of displaying them that “beauty unadorned” was the favorite mode of dress among them. Fra Angelico worked with ardor years and years before attaining the shade of blue that has made his name famous; and when, after much toil, the Bummun bonum in tints was reached, he thought his time had been well Bpent. It is, of course, well known that “blue blood” does not exist, doctors telling us that the veins most perceptible in white, slender hands are gray, red, or green. One cannot discourse of the “green blood of his ancestors,” so that nothing remains save to know better than one talks. But, after all, the sky, the cornflower, and the air are all "of this heavenly tint—and are they not three good things in nature? We look at the unfathomable mass of blue and dream of rest therein—we pluck the tiny flower and feel that beauty is grasped—we inhale the pure, sweet air, and are conscious that health comes with it. In the old pictures and poems (why do we separate them when they are one?' blue told of pure, calm love—never of excitement or passion. The Madonnas are robed in blue, the Magdalenes in purple. Marguerite going to church is clothed in a blue kirtle, while Marguerite, tempted and betrayed, is in black or purple. In the hand of a dead baby we may place a white lily and a blue forget-me-not, but never a red rose. Blue, the shade of the heavens, is appropriately intrusted to those who are heavenward-bound.