Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1886 — Pleasures of Self-Satisfied Beauty. [ARTICLE]

Pleasures of Self-Satisfied Beauty.

Happy is the person who has sound reason for satisfaction with his or her own personal appearance. I once heard Samuel J. Tilden say, in jocose but half-earnest self-condemnation for ever having gone into politics, that portly men were the only ones suitable for statesmanship. What he meant was that personal influence, especially ' among politicians, depended considerably on an imposing physique. A politician has to be all the smarter when he is small. It is undoubtedly true that a man often chooses his pursuit in life with direct reference to his being able to look it. The lean, lank, and sallow fellow: is Apt to become a poet: the chap with an uncommonly straight nose goes to West Point if he can; the possessor of a sober, honest face gets into a bank, the sorrowful visage sends its owner into the ministry, and so on. The most study of self-complacency and perfect—certainty arising from a know-thyself kind of knowledge is afforded by the New York society l*He who chances to be beautiful. Gilbert lias a habit of making the sopranos in bis operas assert their own loveliness placidly. It was so with Patience and Yum-Yum, and the examples seem to have been potent, for I have observed that our social beauties are hardly less openly conscious of their charms than their professional sisters. It was one of the almost perfect creatures at a Patriarch’s ball to whom a rapt and somewhat bewildered beau remarked: “You are quite the loveliest girl here — you are, indeed you are.” “But have you looked around thoroughly ?” she calmly inquired. "Oh, yes; Pve seen every woman in the house, and I assure you that you’re by far the most beautiful. ” —- “Then Miss hasn’t come,” the belle said in a casual manner that outdid Yum-Yum’s declaration that she is the most attractive girl in all the world; “there’s nobody else in society with whom I am comparable. ” How can any pretty girl help finding out her comeliness when persons reflect it as quickly as mirrors do? At; every step she sees admiration expressed in words. Why shouldn’t she accept the unanimous Opinion? When she treads •on the mass of gout and rheumatism that an old curmudgeon calls his f^pt.

thing, shi* does not fly from his impending wrnth, for slio knows that she can See it out with the fair visage that nature hits given to her, “Bleat if yoa ain’t the only one hi the house that could be so infernally careless and awkward," he raged; and - then he looked up at her, his grimace became a distorted sort Of grim smile, nml he apologetically gilded, "without getting damned for it. ” This was simply one awtffl uctiary. o£ matter over mind.— JffoW York letter.