THE STANDARD OF BEAUTY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 21, 4 June 1908, Page 5

THE STANDARD OF BEAUTY.

The standard of beauty is merely a matter of climate (writes Mrs. Alee Tweedio in an English"paper). I remember a Moor once' remarking to a friend of mine that a certain English girl would bo quite nice-looking if she were not so thin, for the Moor, counts feminine perfection by adipose pounds, and no woman is of marriageable age until she has attained enormous proportions, a state reached by eating fatty globules and being fed like Strasbourg geese. I also remember visiting the home of a little.bride in Morocco, a girl about fifteen years of ago, and being struck by the amount of paint with which she was adorned. A box was brought on a mule to her father's door,"and within this curtained howdah tho plump little party, who had not yet met her husband, was placcd. Her hands and feet wore covered with a gorgeous decoration of trellis Work. A perforated paper pattern had been put over them, and the henna dyo laid on it, had gone through the aperture and left a design like laco on hor pretty little limbs; For a few weeks .after she was doposited at hor bridegrocrtn's door sho was | allowed to retain this painted pattern, not being expected to wash or clcan or do any household work.. Sho was attended upon by her mother-in-law during tho ; time of tho honeymoon, after that away wont tho decorations, and sho becamo mama-in-law's slave. This plump' little' party had - rouged her cheeks, .-reddened her lips, and blackened her eyes, until she looked like a Dutch doll. That sort ,of mess was hor half-civilised idea of beauty. It was comic. , I once saw the other sido of tho picture. That was tragic. A little child had died m Southern Mexico. Laying upon a board like a doll upon a tray was this little "angel," for children aro thought angels until tlioy pass the first year of their lives, and if they die during that time their parents are quite happy, strong in tho belief that tlioy instantly roturn to the angels. The idea is pretty, but oh! tho pathos of it! This poor-little waxen figure .was . smeared with rouge and paint, and black cosmotics, crude common colouring rudoly placed on its little face, taking all the simple prcttinosa =nd solemnity from the small dead child.