Health is recognized more and more as a measure of personal beauty. But health is reality it disappears before shams. False living and false ideals work against it and so against beauty. The criterion of beauty will no longer accept powder and paint and wigs, but will have health and reality. Here then is evidence of some culture. A little out-of-door life is opening our eyes to see the natural is true. Consider the Chinese standard ; consider the foot-binding, head-flattening, nose-piercing, tattooing standards, and there is ample evidence we are approaching the true.



Consider the heron and the gull, and it would seem that we are as yet far from it. As the standard evolves from the false and the artificial to the natural and the true, natural eyes are found superior to the effects of antimony and bella-donna, wholesome complexions to painted ones, natural hair to dyed locks. The simpering beauty and the pretty doll have had their day.

Beauty then is in its nature spiritual. Whatever dress it wears it is still this. It is principle underlying all aspects and toward which we are led by these, that in us its divine mission may be accomplished. The midnight sky, the flush of dawn, the rhodora glowing in the woods become to us not isolated beauties, but reflections of the one Beauty that beauty which inspires as well the sweetness and the serenity in the human face; which shines above all in love and compassion. Approach we then His altar of beauty who gave flavor to the apple, bloom to the plum, and perfume to the rose, which utility can claim only in the name of beauty: He who so contrived that floating dust specks should give us the blue of heaven.

Beauty is my redeemer. Beauty it is which shall lift me from the slough of despond with faint whisperings of the soul; beauty which shall be to me token of a higher life here concealed amidst coarser things token of divinity at the heart of all. Beauty it is that shall minister to me in the silent watches of my life; that shall be to me companion, and hope, and joy ; among my thoughts ever and anon sifting rose petals; standing beside me an indefinable presence; passing over my dreams a subtle influence. Alas for those impoverished minds, who live to that alone they deem utility, failing to perceive the utility of beauty. They live like woodchucks, yet are not woodchucks, and hence the impoverishment. But they are rare in whom the waters of beauty do not bubble occasionally and send forth a feeble rill.

Utility may not rightly be considered apart from beauty finds there perhaps its consummation. The wise merchant knows the effect of environment upon the feelings of his employees, and is aware of the stimulus it may afford to work and interest, nor would imprison his factory girls in inhospitable barns to eke out a stygian toil. He counts light and sunshine, green lawns and flowers and pleasing architecture all as adjunct to his business no less than the practical expression of his goodwill and humanity. From such a factory comes better work because fresh air and sunshine and brightness have added their quota. In such a factory hearts are not crushed nor minds wholly benumbed. We see here that cheerful minds mean nimble fingers. If a man have no heart in him, let him put up no factories, engage in no trade: fit society he for Gabriel Grub: fit digger of graves till haply the goblins take him in hand.