FAIR WOMEN VERSUS PARK.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4715, 5 August 1893, Page 3

FAIR WOMEN VERSUS PARK.

The fair-haired women, lissome and' loving, has had her day. Dark-eyed beautjjr, framed in dusky tresees, seems more in keeping with the tall and queenly type of woman that has of late supplanted the petite ideal of the old days. Men say it is bscause the tall woman makes such exquisite piotures, leaning and swaying in graceful poßes, because she is infinitely nicer to make love to than the little woman. She oan cuddle her head up under a. man's chin, touch his cheek with her smooth, velvety face, while a little Woman, even if she stands on tiptoe, only rumples his shirt front. And when she takes to ordering a man about, he doesn't feel quite so much like a fool as when a little woman takeß on the airs of a commanding officer. But the other woman, she of the fair tresses of which Browning wrote: "Such a wonder of flix and floss, freshness and fragrance— floods of it, too ! Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross." She counts in her sisterhood the greatest beauties tbe world has ever known. It was in a web of gold treßses that Helen snared the heart of Paris; it waa with blonde hair that the Magdalen wiped the feet of the Master.

Pbryne the fair, when brought before her judges, suddenly threw off her peplum and dazzled the lawmakers with her wondrous beauty, clad only in the rippling waves of golden hair. Men have not changed through the centuries. Beauty waß then as now a woman's best defence. Instantly her pardon was granted.

Pauls, of Toulouse, whom the people followed .in crowds, enchanted by her beauty, was a blonde. She complained to the Magistrates of these troublesome crowds, whereupon they in their wisdom decreed that she shonld not be thuß annoyed. But as her beauty, being a gift of Providence, did not belong exclusively to herself, and the people had a right to enjoy it, she was compelled to atana one

hour every Sunday afternoon on her balcony that the people might gaze upon her loveliness.

Dante's Beatrice was a blonde : Tasso's Armide was inspired by the fair and blonde Eleonora d'Eate, one of the most beautiful and remarkable women of that epoch, and one with whom, of course, he was desperately in love. *Tho beautiful Cleonice supplants all brunette rivals in the heart of her royal lover when she "veils her E early tears in the shining gold of her air." Venus, the goddess of beauty and of love, rises from the sea foam with dead gold looks. The virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, have blonde bair, and . Aurora, who opens the eastern gateß to tbe day god, bas hair aa yellow as the sunshine. " I am so happy, writes," Mademoiselle de Montpensier, " la grande mademoiselle," in her piquant memoirs, "in being a blonde." . ■