People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1894 — BEAUTY ON THE INCREASE. [ARTICLE]

BEAUTY ON THE INCREASE.

The Women of To-Day Better In Every Way Than Their Grandmother). The assertion that our national beauty is declining is more easily made than substantiated, for it is difficult to adduce satisfactory evidence. Suppose Ing we place in the witness box a number of octogenarians or nonogenarians, we are not wholly convinced that their pleadings and opinions are free from bias, it being an admitted fact that elderly people are in the habit of exalting by-gone generations to the depreciation of the modern. I do not aay this is done maliciously, but with advancing years one is apt to change one’s critical standpoint, and to verge on pessimism, if not be actually swamped by it, says the Gentlewoman. Nor can we judge of a national type by pictures, as artists naturally choose the handsomest models procurable. I am inclined to hold, with the Dally Graphic, that youth may take comfort. Look at the park in summer, go to our country houses in winter, or accon> pany me to the covert side, and you will agree that beauty incarnate is still among us. Tell me if wo are not rearing our young more wisely than did our lackadaisical grandmothers. Are we not cultivating graces of bodily motion, and sitting at the feet of hygienic science? How can the girls of yesteryear compare with the maidens firm of limb and sound in lung who know and appreciate the value of open air and exercise? Is coddling bo rampant? Is Julia now afraid to walk a mile or two in stout boots, no matter what the weather? Think it over fairly and impartially, and I shall be surprised if you pass verdict that the allegation of declining beauty stands proven. Yet another word on the subject Mr. James Payn, in the Illustrated London News, is gallant enough to put in a word for the present-daygirls. Whether as beautiful as formerly or not, they surpass women of all other nations.* A friend of his who is familiar with Circassia tells him that the women of that country are not to be compared with our own for good looks. It is the picture outside the cream pots which has misled the world. And it is certain, he adds, that eastern potentates who are, or who think themselves, connoisseurs in the matter, award the palm to the feminine population of these isles. The Constant inquiry of the shah of Persia, on both occasions when he honored us with a visit, was: “How much do you ask?” addressed to the fathers and husbands of the ladies he had a mind to purchase.